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April 2006 Plenum News 2006 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2005 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Entire Year (minimal, early formats) 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 You can write Comments or read the KeelyNet discussion list. Feel free to subscribe. Be aware in case any of these links don't respond, most will be available through the Wayback Machine, simply cut and paste the link to recall the 'lost' information. 04/30/06 - Holographic Solar Cells The main limitation of solar power right now is cost, because the crystalline silicon used to make most solar photovoltaic (PV) cells is very expensive. One approach to overcoming this cost factor is to concentrate light from the sun using mirrors or lenses, thereby reducing the total area of silicon needed to produce a given amount of electricity. But traditional light concentrators are bulky and unattractive -- less than ideal for use on suburban rooftops. Now Prism Solar Technologies of Stone Ridge, NY, has developed a proof-of-concept solar module that uses holograms to concentrate light, possibly cutting the cost of solar modules by as much as 75 percent, making them competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuels. The system needs 25 to 85 percent less silicon than a crystalline silicon panel of comparable wattage, Lewandowski says, because the photovoltaic material need not cover the entire surface of a solar panel. Instead, the PV material is arranged in several rows. A layer of holograms -- laser-created patterns that diffract light -- directs light into a layer of glass where it continues to reflect off the inside surface of the glass until it finds its way to one of the strips of PV silicon. Reducing the PV material needed could bring down costs from about $4 per watt to $1.50 for crystalline silicon panels, he says. In their ability to concentrate light, holograms are not as powerful as conventional concentrators. They can multiply the amount of light falling on the cells only by as much as a factor of 10, whereas lens-based systems can increase light by a factor of 100, and some even up to 1,000. Holograms have advantages that make up for their relatively weak concentration power. They can select certain frequencies and focus them on solar cells that work best at those frequencies, converting the maximum possible light into electricity. They also can be made to direct heat-generating frequencies away from the cells, so the system does not need to be cooled. 04/30/06 - Wires find path of least resistance TWENTY YEARS ago this month, two researchers discovered a class of materials that sparked dreams of electricity grids that would transmit power without any losses and trains that would levitate along friction-free tracks. Researchers now think they have overcome one of the key obstacles that have stopped these visions becoming a reality. They have shown how to fashion the high-temperature superconductors discovered in 1986 into the wires and cables that engineers need. High-temperature superconductors, usually made of copper oxides, conduct electricity without any resistance at temperatures around the point at which nitrogen becomes liquid: -196 degrees C. If these materials could be turned into wires, they could transmit energy without heating up, making them very efficient power cables. In theory, they should also be able to carry much higher currents than metal wires of the same size. But the materials are brittle and have to be plastered on to more ductile ones to create wires. Magnetic fields disrupt high-temperature superconductors because lines of magnetic flux, like those visible in iron filings scattered around a magnet, create mini vortices in the electrical current. These microscopic tornadoes wander through the material producing a kind of drag on the current, which creates electrical resistance. And that means the superconductivity is no longer perfect. To eliminate this drag, the flux lines and vortices need to be `pinned,' or fixed to particular points in the material. Various methods of pinning have been demonstrated over the past few years, with different degrees of success. To make the wires, they blast a mixture of YBCO and barium zirconate powder with intense laser pulses, creating a vapour that settles on to a metal strip. Nanoparticles of barium zirconate tend to align themselves into columns within the YBCO, and these act as great pins. 04/30/06 - Save on Gas by changing your driving habits Web site Drive Far has a page of techniques describing different methods for reducing your fuel consumption when driving, like stopping your acceleration sooner than normal. I don’t know how many times I have hit the gas to get up an onramp onto the highway only to brake 10 seconds later as I get too close to the car in front of me. Stop accellerating sooner, slip into neutral and see how you go. (via lifehacker.com) 04/30/06 - Simpler and Cheaper Clean Coal Technology Gasification, in which coal is converted to a gaseous fuel, is the front-runner as next-generation technology for cleaner coal-fired power plants. Vattenfall's technology modifies a conventional coal plant, by burning the fuel in pure oxygen instead of air (which is mostly nitrogen). Conventional coal plants generate a flu-gas mixture of mostly nitrogen with some carbon dioxide and water; capturing the carbon dioxide is expensive because it takes a lot of energy to separate the carbon dioxide gas from the nitrogen gas. In oxyfuels technology, the flu gas is mostly carbon dioxide and water, the latter being easily condensed and removed -- yielding pure carbon dioxide, which can be collected. These plants operate at up to 600 degrees Centigrade, and in doing so extract as much as 45 percent of coal's energy, compared with efficiencies below 40 percent for earlier-generation plants. Steam produced in the plant will be piped to the larger plant's turbines to produce power. 04/30/06 - Freezing your non-working hard drive to retrieve information Web site Tech Republic presents a failed hard drive challenge to its tech support readers. One way to resuscitate the busted drive long enough to get a backup? Stick it in the freezer. One of the methods I have used before is to actually remove the drive from the PC, place it in the freezer for a day, then quickly put it back in the machine and try to access it. Why does this work? Who knows, but I heard about this tactic years ago, and it has saved my behind on a couple of occasions. …when the problem is data-read errors off the platters themselves, [I] freeze the hard drive overnight. It makes the data more ‘readable,’ but for a one-shot deal. If this data is critical, and you have a replacement hard drive (which, if it’s a drive failure, you probably do), then you can hook up your frozen hard drive and immediately fetch the data off before it warms up. (via lifehacker.com) 04/30/06 - Letting your Subconscious solve your problems When I have an important (or tough) problem to solve, I often afford myself the luxury of shelving it for a few days, even if I think I can already see a solution. During this time, I don’t think about it and it does not weigh on my mind - I’m busy doing other things. Although I’m not consciously thinking about it, it percolates away in my subconscious, and a solution often announces itself when I least expect it. Itzy’s approach sounds similar to a previously-mentioned sleep on complex decisions suggestion. What do you think - is there something to letting your decisions “percolate,” or is this just a bunch of hooey? (via lifehacker.com) 04/30/06 - Psychic Baby predicts Stock Market? The 28-year old New York resident Linda McDemeter became rich within four months while on her maternity leave. She began buying stocks “at the advice” of her unborn baby who would kick like crazy in her uterus every time the market was about to turn bullish. The would-be mother bought a stethoscope for listening to her child’s heartbeat. And soon she discovered a secret that made her rich. The heart of her unborn child started beating faster as Linda was reading stock-exchange quotations in the newspapers. The fetus was kicking like crazy and its heart rate was racing twice as fast. Later Linda felt her child going especially jerky as she examined the stocks of a particular petrochemical company. One day McDemeter decided to buy the shares of that company. According to her, her child was kicking within her belly frenetically the moment she made the decision to buy the shares. The price of the shares went skyrocketing on the following day. McDemeter made a handsome amount of money as a result. “We conducted an experiment involving 1,500 children aged 3 years and older. During the experiment, the children were supposed to guess a symbol painted on a card in a pack of 25 cards having the same back. Every card had one symbol on it e.g. a cross, a star, a circle, and a square. The kids were told to guess the symbol on a card drawn at random. According to probability theory, an ordinary person may guess one card out of five. We found out that most kids were guessing three cards out of five! Alas, our further studies showed that clairvoyance in a child would normally vanish without a trace as he approached eight years of age. It’s still unclear why things happen this way.” 04/30/06 - Singularity conference at Stanford on May 13+ The Singularity Summit takes place at Stanford on May 13, 9:00am-5:00pm at Stanford Memorial Auditorium. Speakers include - Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, author of "The Singularity Is Near" - Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist, author of "Gödel, Escher, Bach" - K. Eric Drexler, nanotechnology pioneer, author of "Engines of Creation" - Nick Bostrom, director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - BoingBoing's own Cory Doctorow and many more. (via boingboing.com) 04/30/06 - Warnings over USB memory sticks Smart phones, iPods and USB memory sticks are posing a real risk for businesses, warn security experts. Just over half of companies take no steps to secure data held on these devices, found a UK government-backed security survey. Vital business information, such as drug recipes or blueprints could easily be stored on a USB stick, he said. Recently it was discovered that USB sticks full of US military secrets were being sold on market stalls in Afghanistan. "Everyone expects a virus to come through the [e-mail] gateway," he said, "No one expects them to come in on a USB stick." An informal survey by Centennial showed that 66% of people mislay USB sticks and that 60% of those devices have business information on them. 04/30/06 - Disabling USB drive access for security Web site IntelliAdmin has a simple how to for disabling your USB drives to keep people from copying data off your system. Keep in mind that this little software hack only disables USB drives - your USB keyboard, mouse, scanner, etc., will still work just fine. If you work in an environment where you might be concerned with the ease with which someone could walk up to your computer, pop in a USB thumb drive, and walk away with your precious data, this is a simple method that should help prevent that from happening. Disabling USB drives requires one simple change to your registry. If you’re not comfortable editing your registry directly, IntelliAdmin also has written a small program that’ll take care of the registry edit with a simple interface. (via lifehacker.com) 04/30/06 - Space Development conference in LA May 4-7 The speaker lineup for the 25th International Space Development Conference next week in Los Angeles looks amazing: Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Rusty Schweickart, NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, "Science Guy" Bill Nye, Space Exploration Technologies' Elon Musk, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, "space tourists" Dennis Tito and Gregory Olsen, JPL director Charles Elachi, and Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium. (via boingboing.com) 04/30/06 - Free Google 3d Sketchup software Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program whose few simple tools enable you to create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. You can add details, textures and glass to your models, design with dimensional accuracy, and place your finished models in Google Earth, share them with others by posting them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp (free) is a great way to discover if 3D modeling is right for you. 04/30/06 - Lost Manuals online UserManualGuide.com links to hundreds of PDF manuals for consumer electronics from air conditioners to VCRs -- great for lost manuals and garage-sale scores. (via boingboing.com) 04/30/06 - Comet Fragments tracked The comet continues to break apart with the official reports indicating that they are now tracking 36 major fragments and unofficial reports now putting the number into the 40 range (for major fragments). While the trajectory of the original comet would not have brought it overly close to Earth as the "String of Pearls" continues to grow I would suspect that the odds of some sort of smaller piece (say the size of the Russian hit back early in the 20th century) grows simultaneously (my opinion). Of the stuff they are tracking the dates of "closest approach" for the tracked fragments has TWO different time windows depending upon where you read the info: #1 has the dates of May 11-17, also http://www.spaceweather.com/ #2 has the dates of May 25 - June 9 2006 (this is NOT the closest pass of the trackable large chunks ... but the Debris Field area that is trailing the actual comet and which we will be very close to Earth's orbit in this time frame). Nothing may happen ... but other than Shoemaker Levy, which hit Jupiter, it is my understanding that we have little direct knowledge as to what happens when a comet breaks up. which may make this time period "interesting". Just a heads up FWIW (though I am sure you are already following this out of the corner of your eye). 04/30/06 - Second ice chunk falls in SF area - from a cloudless sky First ice chunk created a 2-foot crater in an Oakland park, latest one busted a hole in a gym roof. On a cloudless day! 04/30/06 - Claim of Comet Collision with Earth on May 25, 2006? Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop circle was a message from higher intelligences warning humanity of the consequences of its destructive nuclear policies. Julien concludes that impact is likely around May 25 precisely when the comet crosses the Earth's ecliptic plane. While the first fragment will cross at approximately 10 million miles, lagging fragments threaten to collide. Julien argues that the kinetic energy of even a 'car sized' fragment will impact the Earth with devastating effect. He concludes the May 25 event is tied in to the Bush administration's policy of preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and the effect of nuclear weapons on the realms of higher intelligences. Julien predicts that the comet collision will occur in the Atlantic Ocean between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer, and generate 200 meter waves. (I recommend you download his more detailed paper, 'The Day of Destiny', at the Exopolitics Institute site, here are some quotes - "A heavenly object, hardly larger than a truck, but animated by an enormous kinetic energy - its speed will be approximately 40 kilometers/second - will strike the Earth after having crossed the thick atmosphere of 80 kilometers, then the oceanic depths of 1500 meters at this place, to reach and shake the zone of the dorsal the mid-Atlantic rift crossing from North to the South on the Atlantic ocean floor. Currently, tens of underwater volcanoes lie largely dormant, ejecting very small quantities of magma emerging from gigantic chambers. They will break out, heating the sea water to a boiling point." - Imagine a crop circle showing the solar system, MISSING the EARTH which does not appear on its proper orbit, a few weeks after this fragmentation. Imagine that this crop circle shows the position of the planets corresponding to the date May 14, 2006; the date of the closest approach of the comet, with the planet Mars slightly later, to show that the best date is after May 14 contrary to expectations.) 04/20/06 - I'm off 10 days on sabbatical for business and mischief...... 04/19/06 - Solar dish supplies power for 8 houses The dish, made by Stirling Energy Systems in Phoenix, is the world’s most efficient solar generator. It uses an old principle-that concentrated light is a great heat source-to achieve a level of efficiency on par with conventional power sources and far higher than traditional solar cells. Instead of converting sunlight directly into electricity, as those familiar rooftop solar panels do, it uses a concave array of mirrors to focus light on a central point, where the resulting heat causes compressed hydrogen to expand, driving a four-cylinder engine that turns a 25-kilowatt generator. Measuring 38 feet across and costing $250,000, this is no residential add-on. 04/19/06 - NZ Offers Geothermal Potential for Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells Dr. Agnes Reyes, a geothermal scientist of GNS Science, reports that temperatures at the bottom of about half of New Zealand's 360 abandoned on-shore oil and gas wells are hot enough to produce geothermal power. By tapping in to the geothermal properties of these abandoned wells, she says, New Zealand could potentially harness up to 160 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Estimated temperatures at the bottom of abandoned wells in New Zealand range from 20 degrees C in the shallowest wells to nearly 180 degrees C in the deepest wells, some of which are nearly 5 kilometers deep. Abandoned oil and gas wells are not the only potential new energy source. New wells could be drilled into onshore areas around New Zealand to harness high temperatures at depths of 2500 meters and below. This could deliver another 800 MW of geothermal power for New Zealand, Reyes says. 04/19/06 - DIY Windmill Contest For those of you feeling up for a challenge, gotwind.org has posed a design conundrum to make your head spin: design a complete wind generator for under $175 (£100). Your design (you aren’t required to actually build it) has to employ “readily available components” and produce a minimum of 20 watts at 12 volts. Win, and you get to make the world a better place, get famous, and win a sweet new flashlight. Lose, and we feed you to the turbines. Many of the units found on gotwind.org are made with adapted or salvaged parts, many of them from bicycles (bikes and wind generators have a lot of tech-genetics in common). Setting such a low cost limit is reminiscent of inventions that came out of Gaviotas, an intentional community in the grassy plains of Colombia, where maverick engineers built wind powered water pumps for peasants by borrowing designs from NASA spacecraft blueprints. The DIY Wind Generator Challenge is accepting submissions from April to October 2006 and it’s free to submit. 04/19/06 - Build Storage Batteries, not Power Plants There is another, cleaner way to handle peak demands. In the same way that natural-gas generators dovetail with nuclear reactors, the natural complements to wind and solar power are storage systems, or batteries, that collect the power of the sun and wind and deliver it to us even on calm, still evenings. Storage systems can store power from the existing grid as easily as they can store power from renewable sources. Lead-acid batteries, with proper charge-controllers, can go for thousands of recharges, not 200! NiMH batteries can go for around 1,000 cycles, and LiIon are less: only approx 500 recharges. After time, all chemical batteries lose capacity, so the 1,000 charge-drain cycles of NiMH (and NiCad, incidentally) don't fully kill the battery, but reduce its charge storage capacity. 04/19/06 - Solar Gas 26% more energy than LPG An arrangement of 200 mirrors surrounds a slender 24-metre silver tower supporting a metal and glass ring shaped like a basketball hoop minus the net. Not art work, though, but a source of fuel which turns water and natural gas into a storable `solar gas', which packs 26 per cent more energy than liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and already powers road transport across the world. "Think of it as bottled sunshine," says Dr John Wright, director of the Energy Transformed national research group. "The old bogey of solar power - what happens when the clouds roll over, or it's night - is banished by this. We are turning natural gas into a super efficient gas." In fact the solar tower now running at Newcastle is sufficiently efficient to generate, in theory, all of Australia's electrical needs from a 50 sq km site located in the continent's remorselessly dry and sunny desert zones. Between the near vertical mirrors in a compact layout is a set of trough-like solar energy absorbers, which create a parallel path by which the concentrated heat drives a closed cycle of hot high pressure fluid through conventional turbines able to feed power into a normal electricity grid. Dr Wright says the essential design is sufficiently compact to install on a variety of scales in industrial estates, large retail malls, and landfill sites, which are a rich source of methane or natural gas. "You could for instance, use one of these towers to generate the hydrogen fuel the automotive and trucking industries are looking at to replace gasoline right on the site of a major hydrogen fuel depot - solving the challenge of transporting it in pressurised, refrigerated tankers or by special pipelines." The prototype tower produces more than 500 KW of energy and can create industrially useful temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees C at the focus points used to turn natural gas into the hydrogen enriched `solar gas.' 04/19/06 - Stem cell variation harvested from mice Cells from the testicles of adult mice may have the same potential as embryonic stem cells to cure conditions such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease, possibly sidestepping ethical questions on the research, a study says. German researchers said the cells from the mice testicles have the same ability to grow into many different cell types found in the body. The researchers extracted cells from the testicles of adult male mice and grew them in solutions known to help embryonic cells grow into various other types. Using this technique, the scientists were able to coax the cells to grow into heart, liver, pancreatic and other types of cells. 04/19/06 - $99 Sub-Orbital Space Flights Masten Space Systems has announced plans to launch 1 pound soda can sized payloads into sub-orbital space in 2007. For the low intro price of $99, amateurs can launch space telescopes, microgravity experiments, and multi-spectral Earth imaging missions... The launch vehicle then would return to a soft landing near its takeoff point. Typical payloads would include science experiments such as amateur space telescopes, cellular mitosis in microgravity, and multi-spectral Earth imaging missions, the company said in a statement. MSS said it plans to use its XA 1.0 sub-orbital rocket ? the first in a planned series of 14 extreme-altitude vehicles - to launch the CanSats to altitudes of at least 100 kilometers (62 miles), where they would experience several minutes of microgravity and can be exposed to the vacuum of space. The launch vehicle then would return to a soft landing near its takeoff point, where the CanSats would be removed and shipped back to their owners. The rocket is designed to provide power and data communications to each CanSat.(via newtechspy.com) 04/19/06 - Viewing magnetic energy fields (Received an email from Timm A. Vanderelli referencing this site and I would love to know more about the viewing method. The patterns look like 'lens artefacts' except for the gold one with the ring around it. It would be interesting to approach one magnet to another in steps to see if the pattern changes in the images in response to the interferring energy. - JWD) Using pure and natural physics, I have revealed the magnets true vector potential. Electricity is not necessary to view these images. I have used the Sun, a candle, the planet Mars and even our Moon as light sources. In real-life, these images appear as 3 dimensional transmission holograms to our naked eyes.The images you view in the gallery were captured using a Canon S230 digital camera. I've also shot a couple of rolls of 35mm film with a Nikon SLR, for comparison. There are some visual differences between these two methods of image storage, but they are relatively minor. A thin stream of water is attracted to a strong magnet, and the water is said to be paramagnetic. A candle flame will be repelled by a magnet due to their diamagnetic interaction. Everyone has seen the effect of a magnet and iron filings. They align from one pole of the magnet around to the opposite pole. They become magnets themselves during this process due to their ferromagnetic properties. The electron orbits of an atom can be influenced by electrons in a magnetic field. My unique lens uses a combination of matter and method, of which I have balanced in such a way, to achieve a purpose, harmoniously and in accord with nature. The images you see in my gallery are real. They look like they are from outer-space, but they are from our space - a magnets' space. 04/19/06 - Spinal Cord Cures in China A growing number of patients are heading to China for experimental therapies, such as cell transplants to treat spinal cord injuries and other diseases. Wise Young, a neuroscientist and director of Rutgers University's W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at in Piscataway, NJ, says the availability of the enormous Chinese population will drastically speed up the clinical trial process, allowing new therapies to be tested more quickly and cheaply. In September researchers plan to start a placebo-controlled trial of lithium, which has been shown to boost cell growth and survival in animal models. The next step, if they get permission, will be a trial of stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood transplanted into 300 patients with chronic spinal cord injury. Young says the goal is to register the trials in both China and the United States. 04/19/06 - Chaff Pellets for fuel A combine normally returns the chaff to the field to be broken down as a source of micronutrients in the next season. Last winter pellet manufacturers were caught by surprise when increasing demand outpaced supply. Thus, there now may be greater incentive to convert agricultural waste to pellets. With overall increases in the cost of energy, the challenge is to find cost-effective means of pellet processing, packaging, and delivery. For instance, grass pellets may soon overtake wood pellets as the predominant fuel in the pellet stove market because wood-based pellets have been rising in cost. 04/18/06 - Coal-to-diesel breakthrough could drastically cut oil imports Professor Alan Goldman and his Rutgers team in collaboration with researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a way to convert carbon sources, such as coal to diesel fuel. Goldman explained that the breakthrough technology employs a pair of catalytic chemical reactions that operate in tandem, one of which captured the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This dynamic chemical duo revamps the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process for generating synthetic petroleum substitutes, invented in 1920 but never developed to the point of becoming commercially viable for coal conversion. Fischer-Tropsch yields a wide distribution of molecular weight hydrocarbon products but without any way to control the desired mix. The molecular weight is the weight of a molecule of a substance, or the sum of the weights of all atoms in the molecule. The low-weight and the high-weight Fischer-Tropsch products are useful - the light as gas and the medium-heavy as diesel fuel, Goldman explained. "What we are now able to do with our new catalysts is something no one else has done before. We take all these undesirable medium-weight substances and convert them to the useful higher- and lower-weight products." Technically, this is accomplished by a catalyst that removes hydrogen from the molecules. This converts the hydrocarbons to olefins, products with double bonds which are necessary for the creation of the desirable, useful end-products. The beauty of the new process is that it is highly selective in which hydrogen atoms it removes from the hydrocarbons, channeling the reactions to produce specific, useful products. 04/18/06 - Prominent U.S. Physicists Send Letter to President Bush Thirteen of the nation’s most prominent physicists have written a letter to President Bush, calling U.S. plans to reportedly use nuclear weapons against Iran “gravely irresponsible” and warning that such action would have “disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.” The physicists include five Nobel laureates, a recipient of the National Medal of Science and three past presidents of the American Physical Society, the nation’s preeminent professional society for physicists. “The fact that the existence of this plan has not been denied by the Administration should be a cause of great alarm, even if it is only one of several plans being considered,” he adds. “The public should join these eminent scientists in demanding that the Administration publicly renounces such a misbegotten option against a non-nuclear country like Iran.” The letter, which is available at http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/physicistsletter.html, points out that “nuclear weapons are unique among weapons of mass destruction,” and that nuclear weapons in today's arsenals have a total power of more than 200,000 times the explosive energy of the bomb that leveled Hiroshima, which caused the deaths of more than 100,000 people. 04/18/06 - Changing drive letters When I disconnected my backup drive and plugged in a USB drive the other night, my Windows drive letters got all wonky. D: became G: became F: became H:, and a bunch of my shortcuts didn’t work anymore. But it’s easy to reassign the drive letters of your choice to add-on disks in Windows. Microsoft says you should log on as an administrator, and from Administrative Tools in Control Panel: Double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths. (via lifehacker.com) 04/18/06 - Milestone Achieved in the Development of Biological Fuel Cells Researchers have developed an enzyme based hydrogen fuel cell to power real world devices. The enzyme technology is tolerant of gases that poison traditional fuel cell catalysts removing the need for separation membranes. The enzymes used are isolated from naturally occurring bacteria that have evolved to use hydrogen in their metabolic process. The unique features of these enzymes are that they are highly selective and tolerant of gases that poison traditional fuel cell catalysts, such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide. Since the enzymes can be grown they represent a cheap and renewable alternative to the expensive platinum based catalysts used by others in hydrogen fuel cells. The fuel cell consists of two electrodes, coated with the enzymes, in a small glass tank containing normal air with a few percent of added hydrogen. Since the catalysts are selective and tolerant the gases can be mixed avoiding the need for an expensive fuel separation membrane which is required for many other types of fuel cell. 04/18/06 - Sleep Debt Have you ever got enough sleep at night and walked around the next day feeling groggy and tired wondering "Why do I feel so tired?" The answer may be that you have accumulated sleep debt. In order to be alert during the day each person needs a set amount of nightly hours of sleep. The brain carefully registers every hour of sleep that a person attains, and every hour obtained that is less than the person's nightly requirement is added up as sleep debt over time. Sleep debt is the summation of all the sleep hours you have lost from your nightly sleep requirement and need to regain. The more tired you feel and the easier it is for you to fall asleep during the day the more likely it is that you have accumulated a large amount of sleep debt that needs to be "repaid". This debt can only be repaid by extra hours of sleep. 04/18/06 - Man fined $50 for using device to change traffic signals (How about a wide area spycam video scrambler to snuff invasive secret viewing? - JWD) A man from Longmont, Colorado was fined $50 when the cops caught him using a gizmo that supposedly changes traffic lights from red to green. he says he paid $100 on eBay for it. He had been using it for two years, and says the thing "paid for itself" by saving him time spent waiting for signal lights to change. The device, called an Opticon, is similar to what firefighters use to change lights when they respond to emergencies. It emits an infrared pulse that receivers on the traffic lights pick up. Niccum was cited after city traffic engineers who noticed repeated traffic light disruptions at certain intersections spotted a white Ford pickup passing by whenever the patterns were disrupted. (Buy your own "traffic control preemptive device" here for just $299.99.) (via boingboing.com) 04/18/06 - Automatic Bibliography Generator For the writers out there who want to document their sources. Web site EasyBib helps you easitly generate the bibliography for your latest research paper. By providing us with the information you know about your sources, we can properly format, alphabetize, and print your citation list. For anyone who spends any amount of time putting together a works cited page, this could be a real time saver. (via lifehacker.com) 04/17/06 - Simple Microwave test to show how it saps life (Thanks to Ross Hines for this headsup and do click and read the ENTIRE article! - JWD) If you have ever wondered whether or not microwaved food is safe, here’s an experiment you can do at home: Plant seeds in two pots. Water one pot with water that has been microwaved, the other with regular tap water. The seeds that received microwaved water won’t sprout. If microwaved water can stop plants from growing, think of what microwaved food can do to your health! In 1989, Swiss biologist and food scientist Dr. Hans Hertel studied the effects of microwaved food. Eight people participated in the study. For eight weeks, they lived in a controlled environment and intermittently ate raw foods, conventionally cooked foods and microwaved foods. Blood samples were tested after each meal. They discovered that eating microwaved food, over time, causes significant changes in blood chemistry... 04/17/06 - SpyCam abuses We are told that surveillance cameras are never abused by their operators, each of whom can supposedly be trusted not to use the awesome technology at their disposal to engage in despicable or outright illegal behavior. But this information is false: camera-operators are not angels; they are subject to the same prejudices, temptations and corruptions that we all struggle with; camera-operators get bored or arrogant and abuse their cameras on a regular basis. To confirm this, one only has to keep up with the news being reported from around the world, which is precisely what we plan to do here, on this page, in chronological order. 04/16/06 - New Twist on Hydro Generation Willi Henkenhaf, 86, has designed a two-wheel water turbine that he believes could be used in Canadian rivers without a need for dams, and without involving a risk of winter freeze-up. As well, he says, it would pose no threat to fish habitat, and it would help keep the waterway clean as the direction of current would be altered by the wheels, such that floating debris would be forced to the shores of the river. The old waterwheels sat on a static base. Mr. Henkenhaf's design can be lowered below ice level in deep rivers, or raised higher, depending on the season and need. He says waterpower is the most reliable and possibly the least costly. Whereas rivers run constantly, he says, the wind isn't always blowing. He does have a Canadian patent pending, so he safely owns the design in this country. 04/16/06 - Electric Superfast De-Icer "Dartmouth College engineering professor Victor Petrenko, not to be confused with one of the Champions on Ice, has devised a way to use a burst of electricity to remove ice caked on walls or windows. For surfaces coated with a special film, the jolt gets rid of ice in less than a second, far less time than it takes to hack at it with an ice scraper. While drivers might find easy-cleaning windshields convenient, the technology--called thin-film pulse electrothermal de-icing, or PETD--could have significant economic impact if widely deployed. It could, for example, cut the costs of repairing power lines downed by ice storms and keep plane windshields frost-free, decreasing fuel consumption." 04/16/06 - Sharer - not using it, share it! Sharer! connects borrowers and lenders in a same neighbourhood and allows them to earn money by securely renting out objects they seldom use to others in their area. Users can upload pictures, give a description and browse through other people's objects through a website. The system works in collaboration with the postal system and the postman is the point of contact to the lender. A series of secure electronic lockers are the transit point for the object and the borrower picks up the object and deposits it back there after the loan period is up. Besides, as each item lent has been fitted with an RFID tag, the owner can follow on a website the use of the object. If one of the paths towards sustainability is defining ourselves by the stuff we use, not the stuff we own, Sharer! points the way to that path by showing how local technology can help local people share more effectively, to the benefit of everyone involved. (via boingboing.com) 04/16/06 - Graphite circuitry may handle electrons as waves A study of how electrons behave in circuitry made from ultrathin layers of graphite - known as graphene - suggests the material could provide the foundation for a new generation of nanometer scale devices that manipulate electrons as waves - much like photonic systems control light waves. 04/16/06 - Body Movement Generates Electricity in Miniature Device A new class of devices aims to convert energy created from body movement, the stretching of muscles or the flow of water to power future nanoscale components. These so-called "nanogenerators" would be less bulky than traditional energy sources such as batteries. Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology and graduate student Jinhui Song have created a prototype nanogenerator that produces electrical current through the bending and relaxing of zinc oxide nanowires. When the nanowires flex, they emit a piezoelectric discharge, which is electricity generated by certain materials under mechanical stress. Wang thinks such devices could be used wherever mechanical energy is available. The hydraulic motion of seawater would work, or the motion of a foot inside a shoe. "You could envision having these nanogenerators in your shoes to produce electricity as you walk," Wang said. "This could be beneficial for soldiers in the field, who now depend on batteries to power their electrical equipment. As long as the soldiers were moving, they could generate electricity." 04/16/06 - Watching America - news outside the controlled media This site shows how non-Americans view Americans, American politics, and American policies. The site provides access to news articles and editorials about the United States, which are written all over the world and translated into English wherever necessary. Does Watching America have any political perspective or agenda? No. We seek only to represent non-American views of America. We try to present views from all over the political spectrum. 04/15/06 - Nasa’s new Antimatter Mars spaceship (The problem with space travel, as one astronaut pointed out in an earlier post, is radiation shielding. What good if they are dying or dead by the time they get there? - JWD) Nasa has unveiled their Positron Reactor Mars space ship. The new positron engine is 30 times more efficient at creating energy than a typical nuclear reactor. The hope is to one day come up with a propulsion system that takes astronauts to Mars in just 45 days. 04/15/06 - 100% natural light cool operating LED Scientist’s at USC have developed a new process for making OLED lighting that gives off a warm natural light that can light up an entire room. Unlike incandescent light bulbs which are only 5% Efficient, they believe this new material could be 100% efficient, giving off no heat and run for years. The key is organic light that comes spilling forth from a new diode, appropriately named an OLED (organic light-emitting diode). It doesn't get hot, as do today's incandescent bulbs, so it is more energy efficient. It can also be produced in super-thin sizes, making true ceiling lighting possible. Carbon-based polymers, already the stuff of mobile phone displays, are the key. Scientists have stacked up enough of them while still keeping the resulting product razor thin. The plastics are covered with microscopic coatings of blue, green, and red dyes. Shoot an electric current through the thing, and you have white light. The only remaining obstacle to all of these outlandish-sounding lights, scientists say, is the sensitivity to moisture that such diodes still exhibit. The researchers are confident that they can solve that problem eventually. 04/15/06 - Scientist urges switch to thorium Thorium oxide, which is three times more abundant than uranium, is also a radioactive material. But senior research scientist Dr Hashemi-Nezhad, from Sydney University, says it is safe to hold in your hand. "This is the future of the energy in the world - energy without green, without greenhouse gas production," he said. Dr Hashemi-Nezhad says thorium has all of the benefits of uranium as a nuclear fuel but none of the drawbacks. It can generate power without emitting greenhouse gases and it can be used to incinerate the world's stockpiles of plutonium. Dr Hashemi-Nezhad says thorium waste would only remain radioactive for 500 years, not the tens of thousands that uranium by-products remain active. Unlike uranium, thorium is not fissile, meaning it must be coaxed into a chain reaction. At present, there are two methods of achieving this: a mixed fuel thorium reactor, which uses a small amount of uranium to kick-start the nuclear reaction; and then there is the project that Dr Hashemi-Nezhad is working on. "A particle accelerator is coupled with a nuclear reactor," he said. "A beam of protons sent from the accelerator heats a heavy metallic target, such as lead, and produces huge number of neutrons. "These neutrons start the chain reaction in the reactor. And once you switch off the accelerator, everything dies down." The thorium reactor being proposed by Dr Hashemi-Nezhad can be switched off immediately in the event of an accident - an option not available in conventional reactors. 04/15/06 - Biomimetic Amphibious Robots and slapping ZPE (I loved this description of how the robots stay on the surface without sinking, it makes me think of how we could 'slap' the ambient zpe/aether to produce thrust and lift...ergo, gravity/inertia control. In a couple of the newer Chinese Kung Fu type movies, reference is made to gravity/weight being a mental condition, that if you can move fast enough and will it, you can climb or swim in the air. The absolute best 'Lung Gom Pa' trance produced gravity reduction effect was in 'Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon.' - JWD) The 'Jesus lizard' walks on water and accomplishes this by slapping the water hard enough to boost itself up a while, and as it pushes mostly backwards for locomotion, also pushes to the side a bit to stay balanced; then does it again with the other foot. It's mostly a matter of being light, fast, and having wide slappy feet. This technique has been dupicated in biomemetic robots as a proof of concept, but ultimately they envision bots like this having features like "biochemical sensors that monitor water quality; deployed with cameras for spying, search-and-rescue or exploration; or outfitted with bacteria to break down pollutants." 04/15/06 - Interesting comment Another reader offers this sober thought: "On another note. Consider the fact that we have 130 thousands troops occupying Iraq. There are 11 Million illegal’s in the US. So, who is REALLY an occupied country?"....Out of those 12 million, 6 million are non Mexican, so why do we only talk about Mexicans? Has anyone gone after 100's of thousands of Irish illegals, just for one?...Reader Vacation Plans. In Mexico, 'nothing gringo on May 1st' - "On May 1, people shouldn't buy anything from the interminable list of American businesses in Mexico," reads another. "That means no Dunkin' Donuts, no McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, Sears, Krispy Kreme or Wal-Mart." For some it's a way to express anti-U.S. sentiment, while others see it as part of a cross-border, Mexican-power lobby. For some, the boycott is fueled not just by debate on the immigration bill, but by long-standing resentment over the perceived mistreatment of Mexicans in the United States. 04/15/06 - Program forces Epson printers to use "empty" carts until they run out "This is a free program (apparently made in Russia?) that will allow you to actually use your Epson ink cartridges until they truly run out, vs when the digital management chip on it stops you and forces a replacement." No idea if this works or not, but given how dirty the printer business is when it comes to forcing you to buy overpriced consumables, it seems plausible. - "I got a mailing today about a class action suit being settled by Epson. It is in regards to programming that indicates that ink cartridges are empty when they are not." (via boingboing.com) 04/15/06 - A Stark Warning On Climate Change "In a report based on computer predictions, UK government advisor Professor David King said that an increase of even three degrees Celsius would cause drought and famine and threaten millions of lives The US refuses to cut emissions and those of India and China are rising. A government report based on computer modeling projects a 3C rise would cause a drop worldwide of between 20 and 400 million tonnes in cereal crops, about 400 million more people at risk of hunger and between 1.2bn and 3bn more people at risk of water stress." 04/15/06 - New Video from Steven Mark Mark Jordan reports to the list about this new video posted at this site. Mark claims to have a free energy device in the form of toroidal coils which taps into the earths magnetic lines of force. I've seen this video and its quite amazing. The device is said to 'overheat' within about 30 minutes of operation and as the demonstrator walks with the device in his hands, powered a light bulb, it is PUSHED UP, when it encounters one of the earths flux lines, like a bump in your path. More info can be found on this by doing a search and in this intriguing article posted at zpenergy.com - "...The multiple frequencies begin to feed themselves and the multiple kicks become a combined big kick. I call it resonating. That is why if you notice in the video tapes that it takes just a few seconds for the coil to begin to function at maximum effort. You see, one little kick amounts to nothing. However imagine if you had hundreds of thousands of little kicks combining into one big current kick." 04/15/06 - Cold Fusion OU report from Dennis Cravens (In Issue 62, on page 43 of the Infinite Energy magazine, is a brief comment from New Energy Times about this fascinating claim. - JWD) "Shortly after the APS conference, Dennis Cravens reported that he had scaled up the power levels of his experiments. His APS paper written before his latest laboratory achievements, describes many of the details of his experiment. To manage the higher levels of heat, he is working with a 35 gallon tank, filled with 125 liters of water for his calorimeter. The jumbo-size calorimeter houses a 200 ml cold fusion cell. With a 500-watt input, he is claiming 800 watts output. "It takes about a day to heat up," Cravens. said. He works at an elevation of 9,000 feet in northern New Mexico and is using his new cold fusion reactor to help heat his laboratory. He expects to serve hot tea soon." 04/15/06 - Vespa Electric Hybrid scooter Vespa has unveiled two hybrid scooters that deliver 25 percent more power and use 20 percent less petrol. You plug them into a standard European 220V socket for three hours to charge them, or run them on normal gas-engine mode. They can run battery-only at low speeds, which is useful in indoor/zero-emissions environments. The helmet-space under the seat has been replaced with a stack of 12V/26Ah batteries. The company has developed two versions, based on their Vespa LX 50 (shown above, with 50cc gas & 1000W electric motor) and the more sleek and powerful Piaggio X8 125 (125cc gas & 2500W electic motor). 04/14/06 - Canada won't allow testing of suicide seeds yet Suicide seeds, which are genetically altered to produce sterile plants, won't be planted in Canadian fields any time soon. Suicide seeds are probably the hottest topic in biotechnology now. They would give seed companies a sure method to protect patent rights on genetically engineered seed, which is gaining use around the world. Critics say GURT would place farmers at the mercy of seed companies and endanger the ancient tradition of saving seeds from year to year. Countries in less prosperous countries such as India and Brazil have banned GURT. The technology would relieve seed companies of the need to protect their patents with highly visible legal actions. Mooney said there's strong interest in using GURT for genetically modified trees because tree pollen can travel 2,000 kilometers, making contamination a greater concern than with field plants. Pollen from field plants travels only a few kilometers. 04/14/06 - New Way to Make ‘Green Diesel’ from Coal Coal fuel is seen by some as a potential bridge between the limited supply of oil and alternative fuels, many of which aren't ready for prime time. The United States is sitting on enough coal to make this idea feasible, if it can be extracted and processed cost-effectively. Some 95 percent of the country's energy reserves are coal, while oil and gas make up 2 and 3 percent respectively. The method for transforming coal and other carbon sources into liquid fuel has existed since the 1920s. Today, most large vehicles in South Africa are powered by diesel fuels produced by this method. American companies have expressed interest in the technology, but the process has proved too expensive to catch on, even though green diesel emits fewer particulate and less carbon monoxide pollution than gasoline engines. The researchers have improved the process by using special catalysts that rearrange carbon atoms in coal to form higher-energy molecules, which are then converted to usable diesel. 04/14/06 - Super-efficient Motors Enter U.S. Market A practical die-cast copper rotor for electric motors has been the "holy grail" for motor manufacturers for many years. The new, copper rotor technology is the result of several years of research and development by the Copper Development Association (USA) and the International Copper Association. "Siemens has raised the bar on electrical motor efficiency, and we look forward to more manufacturers adopting the technology. The use of die-cast copper rotors reduces energy requirements, allows motors to run cooler, extends motor life and reduces overall weight and/or size." Siemens achieved superior efficiency in its new motors by combining the inherently low resistive (I2R) losses of high-conductivity copper squirrel cages with optimized rotor and stator designs. Other improvements include a redesigned cooling system, antifriction bearings, polyurea-based grease, dynamically balanced rotors and precision-machined mating surfaces for reduced vibration. Specially designed insulation enables the motors to meet NEMA standard MG1-2003 for variable speed (inverter duty) operation. According to Siemens, the new lines of motors are available up to 20 horsepower. Over the coming months, the aluminum-frame line will be expanded to 30 hp and the cast-iron frame line to 400 hp. 04/14/06 - Make your own liquid magnets The composition of ferrofluid by volume is about 5% magnetic solids, 10% surfactant, and 85% carrier. The surfactant is what keeps the particles from sticking together permanently. Ferrofluids are often used for damping speakers and in disk drives. This procedure doesn’t seem to complex and one of the main components is ferric chloride, a.k.a. PCB etchant. Thanks go to [Jason Uher] who sent in this tip and says that it has worked out quite well for him in the past. 04/14/06 - Maxwell's Vortex Sea was not Four Dimensional There has been alot of speculation recently that Maxwell was working within a four dimensional aether in order to explain electromagnetism, and that this fact has been deliberately covered up. Anybody can read Maxwell's 1861 paper 'On Physical Lines of Force'. Unlike Tesla's work, Maxwell's work has not been covered up, although its contents have rather been swept under the carpet. You can read the whole 1861 paper here on this web link. On a first reading of this paper, one might be forgiven for thinking that Maxwell is trying to explain magnetism using a two dimensional layer of vortex cells. In actual fact, it extends to three dimensions when we pile these layers on top of each other. There is no question of any fourth dimension being involved in Maxwell's thinking. It is the three dimensional vortex sea itself which has been swept under the carpet, and it should be further noted that although Maxwell mentions the aether in his 1861 paper, he does not use this word in connection with his vortex sea in this paper. 04/13/06 - Fabric repels stun gun attacks The product is a polyester fabric that bonds a conducted material and sends the electricity coming from a stun gun back where it came from. It is now available for sale only to military and law enforcement agencies, but one wonders how long before it is being worn by those on the streets of America. A Taser or stun gun works by sending enough electricity into a person's body to overwhelm the neuromuscular system, rendering the person incapacitated. Specifically, the stun gun sends two probes into a person's body that create the equivalent of 50,000 volts. That's enough to zap you into passing out cold. But Thor Shield intercepts those electrical probes and prevents the wearer from being zapped. A company named G2 is the creator. A video put out by the company shows no ill effects of a stun gun to an executive wearing a Thor Shield hat and jacket. 04/13/06 - Interesting Ideas Peter Brown's low-tech solution to cell-phone yakkers in movie-theaters: a water pistol. Though he cautions against copying his technique, Mr. Brown notes with pride that he and his accomplice have never been caught, he told the Monitor. If the guilty party looks back to see who watered his neck, "we simply practice the quick whip-around and affronted look that insinuates that you, too, have been hit." / The Chicago Cubs have hired a company to stop pigeons from dumping on fans at Wrigley Field. Bell Environmental Services will do this by installing its "patented and revolutionary" Bell Strip as "bird control." According to Wireless Flash News, the virtually invisible strip of plastic wiring delivers a mild electrical shock to birds that land on it. / Car-sharing. You don't own the care outright; you pay for the time to use it. Think condo time-share. Think libraries, video rentals and taxis. Five companies have sprouted up in the U.S. since 2000. One of them, Flexcar in Portland, Ore., has 75 vehicles that can be picked up at any of more than 30 places around the city, with arrangements made over the Internet. "The average American car is used less than an hour a day," said Bill Scott, general manager of Flexcar Portland. "Our cars average five to 12 hours a day, extending [the car's] useful product life-cycle while reducing the number of cars on the road." A Flexcar survey shows that 43 percent of its 30,000 members either got rid of their cars or didn't buy one they would have had to buy, reports emagazine.com 04/13/06 - Do your Homework to improve chances of the Aha! moment If you’ve experienced the highs and lows of creative thinking, you know that sometimes the creative well is dry, while at other times creativity is free flowing. It is during the latter times that problem solvers often experience so-called “Aha!” moments - those moments of clarity when the solution to a vexing problem falls into place with a sudden insight and one sees connections that previously eluded you. “The new study shows that this ‘Aha! Moment’ is the culmination of a process that begins even before one starts working on a specific problem. People can prepare to solve an upcoming problem with a flash of insight by adopting a particular frame of mind for doing so.” The research suggests subjects can mentally prepare to have an “Aha!” solution even before a problem is presented. Specifically, as they prepare for problems that they solve with insight, their pattern of brain activity suggests that they are focusing attention inwardly, are ready to switch to new trains of thought, and perhaps are actively silencing irrelevant thoughts. Mental preparation that led to insight solutions was generally characterized by increased brain activity in temporal lobe areas associated with conceptual processing, and with frontal lobe areas associated with cognitive control or “top-down” processing. More than a century ago, Louis Pasteur said “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” By this, he meant that sudden flashes of insight don’t just happen, but are the product of preparation. 04/13/06 - Pacific Ocean Grows More Acidic The Pacific has grown more acidic over the past 15 years largely because of the water's intake of carbon dioxide released by humans burning fossil fuels, the researchers said. The study found a decrease of about 0.025 units in pH, which indicates the rise in acidity. The seas serve as the biggest reservoirs for carbon dioxide belched by burning oil, gas and coal. They absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere each year. Scientists say the oceans will absorb about 90 percent of carbon dioxide produced by humans during the next millennium. As carbon dioxide levels in oceans climb, marine life suffers. Skeletons of pteropods, free-swimming planktonic mollusks, grow at a slowed pace in waters laden with carbon dioxide. These mollusks serve as an important food source for North Pacific salmon, mackerel, herring and cod. Similar detrimental effects in microscopic algae and animals could impact marine food webs and significantly change the biodiversity and productivity of the ocean, said team member Victoria Fabry of California State University, San Marcos. 04/13/06 - Forget oil -- water is what we will need In the American West, water disputes are getting more heated and more frequent. The Rio Grande barely makes it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico anymore. Worldwide, more than a billion people don't have access to clean water. And yet, when most people think of a natural-resource crisis for the coming century, it's usually oil that comes to mind. Farmers are forced to either scale back on crop production, give up farming and head to a city, or find water from somewhere else. The same goes for people in need of drinking water and water for sanitation. In many parts of the world, this has led people to drill deep into aquifers that have been storing water over thousands of years. Each year, for example, California pumps out 15 percent more water from the ground than the rains replenish, and Arizona 100 percent more. A quarter of India's crops are irrigated with water pumped out of aquifers at an alarming rate, portending a major crisis in the coming years. This can't last for much longer. We need to restore sanity to irrigation, so as to bring down the amount of water needed to produce each morsel of food. The world grows twice as much food as it did a generation ago, but it takes three times more water from rivers and underground aquifers to do it. 04/13/06 - Cold, microwaveable foil (This is an interesting technique that might have other uses for high frequency applications. - JWD) Qinetiq has cooked up an interesting idea, a metal wrapping that helps keeps food cold but can also be used in a microwave without sparking and damaging the machine, as ordinary metal foil does. The secret is to make the wrapping from thin polyester and cover it with tiny squares of aluminium, the Qinetiq patent reveals. The company has found that aluminium squares 300 micrometres wide, and spaced apart by 100-micrometre tracks of clear plastic, make the perfect heatwave-frequency filter. Microwaves at the standard frequency and wavelength ignore the grid of squares and can cook the food as normal. But normal heat is reflected, to help keep the food cool. Enough light passes through the polyester for a cook to see through the packaging and stored food will also stay fresh longer because the polyester is air-tight. 04/13/06 - Futuristic house made of spinach protein and soy-foam Not only does the building run a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein, but it also produces more energy than a single family’s needs, allowing the excess to be distributed to neighbors. This radical shift, from centralized energy systems today, fosters community interdependence as neighbors benefit from the resources of others. 04/13/06 - Web 2.0's Startup Fever Software toolkits and cheap hardware have led to the comeback of the garage startup. But this time the boom is more rational. This explosion of new Web sites -- a phenomenon often dubbed "Web 2.0" -- is great for all kinds of Internet users. But how long can this new crop of startups survive without charging for their products? The most common revenue source in the Web 2.0 world is contextual advertising -- but, as some analysts point out, the nickels and dimes earned when visitors click on ads provided by the likes of Google's AdWords barely bring in enough to cover the costs of Web server hardware. "Anybody who has the money to rent a server for $100-200 per month can actually write a Web 2.0 application, put it up, start sharing, and make a name for themselves. So there is not a dot-com type bubble, but there is a 'geek founding' bubble." "There's nothing wrong with being ad-supported, but you can't assume that AdWords will get you all the way to building a big company," says Clavier. "The vast majority of these companies do not need revenue -- because they don't have any expenses," says Seth Godin, a Web marketing strategist and author of the widely read Permission Marketing. "The people are doing it for love or in their spare time." 04/13/06 - Flash drive swells up when filled with data Like a tick that balloons when engorged with its host's blood, the Flashbag blimps out when you fill it with ones and zeros. It's a standard USB flash drive that has a tiny pump in it that inflates when you load it with data. So if your drive is full of stuff, it blows up like a balloon, but if it's empty it remains flat and rectangular. It'll stay inflated even when powered down, so you'll be able to estimate how many more MP3s you can leech from your friend's computer just by taking a gander. (via boingboing.com) 04/13/06 - Higher carbon dioxide, lack of nitrogen limit plant growth Earth's plant life will not be able to "store" excess carbon from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as well as scientists once thought because plants likely cannot get enough nutrients, such as nitrogen, when there are higher levels of carbon dioxide, according to scientists publishing in this week's issue of the journal Nature. 04/12/06 - Things grow better with Coca-Cola (This fascinating article is from the January-February 2005 Nexus magazine. - JWD) Indian farmers have come up with what they think is the 'real thing' to keep crops free of bugs. Instead of paying hefty fees to international chemical companies for patented pesticides, they are reportedly spraying their crops with Coca-Cola. Gotu Laxmaiah, a farmer in Andra Pradesh, is one of hundreds of farmers delighted with his new cola spray, which he applied this year to several hectares of cotton. "I observed that the pests began to die after the soft drink was sprayed on my cotton," he told the Deccan Herald newspaper. It is clearly not Coke's legendary 'secret' ingredient that is upsetting the bugs. The farmers also swear by Pepsi, Thums Up and other local soft drinks. The properties of Coke have been discussed for years. It has been reported that it is a fine lavatory cleaner, a good windscreen wipe and an efficient rust-spot remover. (Source: The Guardian, 2 November 2004) 04/12/06 - Proper Diet might postpone Old Age by 15 Years The studies were conducted on rats because the chemistry of rat nutrition is so much like that of human nutrition that the data obtained with rats do not need to be discounted when applied to humans. The rats were divided into two groups. One group was fed a diet containing enough vitamins and other necessary food substances for the animals to grow, remain healthy, and bear young. The second group of animals was given what Dr. Sherman calls an optimum diet, differing from the first by having more milk in it. The extra milk supplied more calcium or lime, more protein, and more of vitamins A and G. The animals on this optimum diet lived much longer than the first group of animals, and in addition had more vitality. Interpreted in terms of human life, Dr. Sherman said that the gain the rats made was equivalent to extending the span of human life from 70 years to 77 years. The period known as "the prime of life" was extended even more in proportion. Signs of senility that would appear in normal individuals on an adequate diet at 65 years of age would be postponed by the optimum diet to 75 or 80 years. 04/12/06 - Harvesting energy from the RF signals that surround us Hawaii-based Ambient Micro LLC, which has developed a way of harvesting small amounts of power from the ambient radiowaves that surround us every day. The company calls its process the "recycling of radiowaste," and it initially envisions its technology replacing batteries that would be used in smoke alarms, RFIDs and other sensor-dependent devices that consume very small amounts of power. The story, which appeared in the Honolulu Star Bulletin, reports that Ambient Micro recently snagged a $100,000 (U.S.) research contract with the U.S. Air Force to develop a prototype power supply for sensors on tiny intelligence drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles. The technology wouldn't collect nearly enough energy to power something like a laptop, let alone a car. But, "Things that used to require watts of power are now running on milliwatts and will soon only require microwatts." "Ambient Micro's goal is to develop a tiny device that harvests not only photons (visible light and invisible electromagnetic radiation), but also converts sound waves, vibrations and hot-cold temperature differences into power." If you can turn stray cellphone signals into power, then are we really doing damage to ourselves by pressing these devices to our heads for hours each day? 04/12/06 - Nuclear Power and Climate Change: Is Our Choice Glow or Cook? The argument, as made by people like James Lovelock and the Wired crowd, goes something like this: we must make drastic cuts in our greenhouse emissions; renewable energy is not yet ready for prime time and efficiency improvements alone won't work; nuclear energy is safer than it was and is zero-carbon in operation; therefore, climate chaos demands a massive program of building nuclear reactors. 04/12/06 - Global Warming's Next Casualty: Igloos It's becoming harder to find the right snow to build an igloo, and melting permafrost is turning land into mud. With climate change the nature of the Arctic is changing, too, in ways that worry the people who live there. The ocean is eating their land as sea ice melts and storms erode shorelines and wash away fishing communities, changing climate means new plants in some areas and changes in migratory routes of animals people depend on for food, weather is stormier and food sources for polar bears and caribou change. While change is unsettling for many, it isn't necessarily all bad, the exhibit notes. For example, a reduction in sea ice could improve navigation and industrial development, the growing season lengthens and rich northern fisheries may expand. "They are truly concerned,'' anthropologist Igor Krupnik said Tuesday of the Arctic natives. 04/12/06 - Propagated High Frequency Wave Propulsion (Gene Hogan sent this interesting URL showing theoretical waveguides to provide thrust. - JWD) UFOs are sending out an electronic signature of super-high radio-frequency electromagnetic pulses (see the the USAF account of "UFO Encounter One"). The pulses are in the 3 GHz region (the microwave region) of the electromagnetic spectrum at a wavelength of 10 centimeters.Microwaves though are a very useful range of frequencies; at one particular frequency (3 GHz for atmospheric air) they can then create spin-resonance in the electrons of the atoms of the gases in the surrounding air. Electron spin resonance (ESR) raises the normal-mode 'lower energy' state of the electron up to the higher energy state, the visual effect of which is an emission of light photons of various colours (the subject of which is already covered elsewhere on this website). For current research suggests that the most efficient configuration is two power sources (of slightly different frequency), spaced a few wavelengths apart, so that the patterns of constructive and destructive interference work collectively to produce an electric field directional propulsion 04/12/06 - Radio Wave Controlled Electric Field Drive System (On the High Frequency Propulsion item above, I found a link to a far more interesting page, in my opinion of course. It ties in perfectly with the 'spider effect' researched by Russian scientist Yuri Ivanov. - JWD) All the electric lines emanate outward from the sphere, but now they are bent in one direction because of the shift in frequency of that second radio wave. Now instead of all things being equal, the electric field is forced to follow the paths created by the channels of the radio wave's constructive and destructive lines. This huge field or grid, has a great amount of pressure distributed over a large area and it resists movement. But the radio wave puts the electric field close enough to the sphere to cause repulsion between the sphere and the grid - causing the sphere to move. After that each fraction of a second, as soon as the craft then moves the slightest bit, a new grid is created and more movement occurs, over and above the initial movement from the preceding one. Therefore, you have an acceleration occurring. Gravity is an acceleration, and so it mimics gravity. Movement occurs as long as you provide enough electric field and radio waves with just the right amount of power and frequency deviation. 04/12/06 - Flow batteries: The solution to Toronto's energy woes? Massive flow batteries could be used today to help Toronto with its energy bottleneck. One of the problems with Toronto is that we've come to depend too much on energy generation located outside the city, and drawing that power into the city during peak times puts a major stress on transmission infrastructure. This includes imported power. As one provincial bureaucrat told me, Canada's largest city is "living off too many extension cords." This situation will only be made worse as more coal plants are shut down, which is why there's an effort underway to build natural gas plants within city limits -- four are envisioned at last count. The author of this article suggests that flow batteries -- either one massive one or several not-so-massive ones -- should be located in strategic spots throughout the city where electricity is most needed or where we have transmission bottlenecks. The batteries could store cheap energy drawn from the grid during non-peak times, and during more expensive peak times could be put into service to take pressure off the grid and the transmission infrastructure. It's an interesting approach to shaving peaks and levelling loads, and not the first time I've heard about it. Problem is flow batteries of this size are still highly experimental, and utilities are averse to taking risks. 04/12/06 - Updated technologies expose air's unseen eruptions (I am always looking for visualization technologies that might be applied to seeing zpe or anomalous energies. - JWD) Researchers have combined modern high-speed digital video with techniques known as shadowgraphy and schlieren imaging, which date back centuries. Similar visualizations are illuminating the complex behavior and destructive impacts of shock waves in past and potential aviation disasters, says Penn State's Gary S. Settles, who heads the lab in University Park. The investigators have also been capturing extraordinary footage of gunshots, and their analyses may alter the way in which weapons experts interpret some types of forensic evidence. "A good fluid dynamicist knows you have to see the flow to know what's going on," says physicist Leonard M. Weinstein of the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., who pioneered some of the visualization techniques. They also record the images with a high-resolution digital video camera capable of taking thousands of 1-microsecond-long exposures each second. A particular advantage of digital video in place of bulky film cameras is that shadowgraphy setups have suddenly become portable. The screen, now the bulkiest piece of the equipment, rolls up for transport. 04/11/06 - A Laser that can burn Fat Researchers at the Wellman Centre for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) have shown that a laser can preferentially heat lipid-rich tissues, or fat, in the body without harming the overlying skin. Laser therapies based on the new research could treat a variety of health conditions, including severe acne, atherosclerotic plaque, and unwanted cellulite. In the first part of the study, the researchers used human fat obtained from surgically discarded normal tissue. Based on a fat absorption spectrum, tissue was exposed to a range of wavelengths of infrared laser light (800-2600 nanometers) using the Free-Electron Laser facility at Jefferson Lab. The researchers then exposed fresh, intact pig skin-and-fat tissue samples, about two inches thick, to free-electron laser infrared light cantered around the two most promising wavelengths, 1210 and 1720 nm. Rox Anderson, lead author on the study and a practicing dermatologist at Harvard, says the results provide a proof of principle for the use of selective photothermolysis, selectively heating tissues with light, for several potential medical applications. Dr. Anderson is most excited about the potential for using lasers to target sebaceous glands. Dr. Anderson also envisions that laser treatments could emerge for other medical conditions involving lipid-rich tissues, such as atherosclerosis, which causes heart disease and stroke. Fatty plaques form in arteries, rupture, and kill millions of people each year. 04/11/06 - Tweak to minimize Firefox memory usage - 180mb to 60mb This little fix will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, and as a result it will take up less than 10MB of memory while minimized. So far, from my experiences with using this today, when you maximize Firefox it will obviously increase the memory usage. However, it does not seem to go back up to the insane amount that it was at before minimizing it. For example, Firefox was at 180MB of memory usage and then I minimized it and after a few seconds I maximized it. After maximizing it and continuing on my routine business it appeared to only have gone up to 60MB. # Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter. # Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean. # In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter. # Now select True and then press Enter. # Restart Firefox. I have also set the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers value to 0 because that will prevent Firefox from caching pages for the back button. 04/11/06 - Smart homes go mass market As the recent housing boom slows down, new home builders need to find ways to compete with the used houses that are piling up on the market. Solution: the smart home. While it’s possible to retrofit an older home with digital bells and whistles, it’s far cheaper and easier to trick out a new home. When the walls are open, additional wiring is relatively inexpensive to add and other amenities - such as a killer home theater system - can be painlessly financed over a thirty-year mortgage. Home builders are now courting a new generation of younger buyers who consider technology a natural part of their lives. Even though wireless distribution of data, audio and video is rapidly improving, most experts agree that homeowners are better off having wires in place if possible. Whatever wireless is able to do, wires can do better and more cheaply, with the added benefit that there is no radio interference to worry about as the home airspace fills up with other wireless signals. 04/11/06 - Sunglasses that prevent Jet-Lag Scientists in Edinburgh have found that people can adjust their body clocks when traveling to different time zones by altering their light patterns.Jet lag, which causes feelings of sleepiness and muscle inefficiency, is affected by the biological clock. (via lifehacker.com) 04/11/06 - Cheap VOIP calls from your landline, no computer needed Web site Jajah lets you make VoIP-cheap phone calls from your land line. To use Jajah, you simply enter your phone number and the phone number of the person you’d like to call. After you press the green call button, your phone will ring. When you pick it up, Jajah will connect you to the destination number. You can give Jajah a free 5 minute try at their website. This is a really cool idea, especially for those of you who would like to try out VoIP prices but don’t have the hardware to make a phonecall from your computer. 04/10/06 - Major Mars Challenge Is Human Physiology, Not Equipment Astronaut/physiologist tells day-long high school forum that protecting humans from high-level radiation, and bone and muscle loss pose greatest challenge in getting to Mars. During the 13- to 30-month roundtrip every cell in the body could experience a high energy event with heavy metal ions. Speaking as a veteran space traveler, Pawelczyk noted that as currently envisioned, the Mars probe would take as little 13 months to a maximum of 30 months. “We run the possibility of losing nearly half the bone mineral in some regions of the body, which would make the astronauts’ skeletons the equivalent of a 100-year-old person,” he said. Such fragile bones could fractures, which would be a most unwelcome challenge. “Another that’s less well-known,” he said, “is that in deep space there are more highly energetic particles that are ions of metals heavier than iron. On Earth, the only place we see such particles are in fallout from nuclear explosions. But it’s estimated that by the time travelers return from Mars, every one of the cells in their body will be transited by a high energy event. “What happens to the cells’ DNA?” Pawelczyk wondered. “How will that affect human biology and cancer risk? Our ability to predict these levels and the error in our estimates probably will be an order of magnitude - plus OR minus,” he warned. More positively, he said the U.S. recently activated a facility that will begin to study irradiating biological tissue. 04/10/06 - Government says 165 degrees (74C) kills bird flu, other viruses Preparing for the arrival of bird flu, the government on Wednesday gave advice for making chicken safe to eat: Cook it to 165 degrees farenheit (74 Celsius). While the government has always offered "doneness" advice, it has never before declared what it takes to kill viruses and bacteria that may lurk in poultry. The cooking recommendation came from a scientific advisory panel that said raw poultry should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees (74 Celsius). The department's "Is it Done Yet?" campaign provides a range of temperatures, including for chicken breasts and for whole birds. Raymond said that's too confusing and from now on, the department will be sticking with a minimum of 160 degrees farenheit (71 Celsius) for all poultry. "That's based on the best science available 165 degrees is more than adequate to kill all food pathogens found in poultry, including avian influenza," he said. The department also strongly recommends that people use food thermometers and follow basic rules for kitchen safety: wash hands often, keep raw poultry and meat separate from cooked food and refrigerate or freeze food right away. The primary target of the recommendation is not bird flu but salmonella, a bacteria that causes food poisoning and can be deadly unless infected people are treated promptly with antibiotics, reports AP. 04/10/06 - New energy efficient buildings the wave of the future More developers are coming up with fuel-efficient buildings that aim to cut thousands off a company’s power bill each year, conserve gallons and gallons of water and make workers more comfortable. They are known as “green buildings,” and they may be a common sight in the work force in coming years as energy prices remain a concern. Air coming from overhead vents needs to be at least 55 degrees, cool enough to penetrate the warm layer near the ceiling as it filters down to the worker’s desk. Not so in a green building, where the air comes from the under-the-floor system, which keeps it coming out at a constant 65 degrees. That simple change can conserve enough energy to save a company about $60,000 a year on the power bill, said Koll Senior Vice President Mike Rosamond. Other conservation steps that Koll takes include drought-tolerant plants that need less irrigation and white roofs to reflect sunlight. Some even suggest the buildings are actually healthier to work in. “You have increased productivity because of fewer sick days,” Rosamond said. Koll does get credit as a pioneer for bringing green buildings to the suburban office market, said Rives Taylor, sustainability director for Gensler, an international architecture firm. The buildings are catching on across the United States. Some counties and municipalities are even encouraging the practice by giving incentives, such as speeding up the permit process on “green” commercial developments. 04/10/06 - First fuel-cell police car delivered by Chrysler The car will serve in the Wayne State University Police Department as a prototype that could aid in research for fuel cell technology. The Mercedes F-Cell has a range of 160 kilometers (100 miles) and a top speed of 135 kilometers (85 miles) per hour. It will be refueled at a newly built hydrogen fueling station. DaimlerChrysler has already developed fuel cell powered Dodge Sprinter vans and Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses, in addition to 100 fuel-cell vehicles in customer hands. Japan is currently considered the leader in fuel cell technology, and plans to operate fuel cell powered trains sometime next year. A fuel cell car developed by the Japanese automobile company Honda can start in temperatures as low as 15 below zero (four degrees Fahrenheit). Fuel cell technology is powered by a reaction between hydrogen, oxygen, and a catalyst, which releases energy into a fuel cell. Because the only byproduct is water, it is seen as a solution to pollution and rising oil costs. However, most experts said fuel cell cars are at least 10 years away from mass production. 04/10/06 - Mitochondria May Mechanically Regulate Nuclear Function In a paper being presented in two American Physiological Society sessions at Experimental Biology 2006, a joint Estonian-French team demonstrated “for the first time that mitochondria are able to induce nuclear deformation, suggesting that mitochondria may mechanically regulate nuclear function.” In the experiment, the researchers found that in an artificial medium mimicking the cytosol, 10 micro-molar of valinomycin (a potassium ionophore that induces mitochondrial matrix swelling) decreased nuclear volume by a significant 12% ± 2%. And 150 micro-molar of diazoxide (a mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channel opener) reduced nuclear volume a similar amount. “However, 150 micro-molar of 5-hydrooxydecanoate (thought to be a specific inhibitor of these channels), completely blocked the effect,” according to the report, leading to the conclusion that: “mitochondria are able to induce nuclear deformation, suggesting that mitochondria may mechanically regulate nuclear function.” Veksler said one idea that needs to be checked out is: If this mechanical communication changes nuclear geometry, does it also impact nuclear function, namely transcription? 04/10/06 - Japan: Brain Training to offset memory problems "I want to delay becoming senile as much as possible," said Kondo, who lives in a Tokyo home for the elderly. "I know someone who gets things that happened recently mixed up with tales from the war days. I don't want to become like that," added Kondo, after attending a weekly "Healthy Brain Class" course run by the Shinagawa ward in Tokyo. At the class, 30 students -- all over 70 -- perform the drills for half-an-hour once a week and are given more exercises to work on at home, every day for six months. Scientists say a daily dose of such exercises improves the memory and even the condition of dementia patients. 04/10/06 - "Nano" Safety Recall A product touted as “nano” has hospitalized six German consumers, prompting more warnings over the dangers of nanomaterials. Since March 27, after a German discount store began offering an aerosolized form of the product, which is a protective sealant for glass and ceramics, 79 people who used the spray have reported breathing problems and coughing. The six who were hospitalized for pulmonary edema have now been released, and typically the symptoms go away in about a day. The number of new cases dropped after the product was pulled from the market two days after its introduction. Previously, the product had been sold in a pump spray container, and during four years no problems with it were reported, according to Jurgen Kundke, a spokesperson for Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. The aerosol form creates a much finer mist of droplets than the pump, possibly allowing the droplets to stay in the air longer or to penetrate further into the lungs, says Kundke. "We have seen this effect in other sprays with no nanoparticles, so it's a question of the aerosol and not especially of the nanoparticles," Kundke says. Although the product is labeled "nano," Kundke says it might not contain nanotechnology. "The recipes are still secret, he says. "We don't even know if there was nano in the product." 04/10/06 - Oslo sewage heats its homes In an extreme energy project tapping heat from raw sewage, Oslo's citizens are helping to warm their homes and offices simply by flushing the toilet. Large blue machines at the end of a 300-meter long tunnel in a hillside in central Oslo use fridge technology to suck heat from the sewer and transfer it to a network of hot water pipes feeding thousands of radiators and taps around the city. The heat pump, a system of compressors and condensers, cost 90 million Norwegian crowns ($13.95 million) and has an effect of 18 megawatts (MW), enough to heat 9,000 flats or save burning 6,000 tonnes (5,900 tons) of oil a year. And experts say sewers could be exploited elsewhere. "The technology is there, so if the infrastructure is also there, this is a feasible solution in many cities worldwide," said Monica Axell, head of the International Energy Agency's heat pump center. The agency advises 26 industrialized nations. She said a bigger heat pump in Sweden, with a 160 MW capacity, exploited heat from treated sewage. And in Finland, a 90 MW plant ran on waste water. In Oslo, untreated sewer flows -- from toilets, bathtubs, sinks and rainwater from the streets -- runs into the system past a filter that keeps out big objects such as dead rats. Sewage was flowing into the system at 9.6 Celsius (49.28 Fahrenheit) on Friday and coming out at 5.7 Celsius after heat is extracted with a refrigerant. The energy in turn goes to warming the water in the 400 km (250 mile) pipe system, fed to offices and homes, to about 90 C from a temperature of 52 C when it reaches the sewerage plant. Other plants, burning industrial waste, also heat the water. Sewer power is less polluting than burning fossil fuels but more than renewable energy like wind power. About a third of the heat energy comes from electricity to drive the system and the other two-thirds is the heat from the sewer. 04/10/06 - the Imagined Source of Food You probably never wanted to look too closely at a chicken nugget. But what if you discovered that the true contents of that nine-piece box are a gallon of petroleum, at least a dozen pounds of processed corn and a touch of butane? You might switch to free-range chicken from Whole Foods and organic asparagus. But then you find out that the free-range chicken lived her life in a warehouse with 20,000 other chickens. And the asparagus was flown in from Argentina, using oil for which the US military is fighting and killing. What’s visible on our plates is only the tip of the iceberg-and I don’t mean lettuce. So what should we eat? That’s the genesis of Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan follows each one of the four meals down its food chain to find out where, exactly, they originated and how. So is organic better? Whole Foods, with its pictures of happy chickens and cows in green pastures, certainly makes us feel virtuous about what we buy there. Pollan dubs this phenomenon “supermarket pastoral”-a fantasy that he squashes on a trip to the “free-range” chicken farm and to a large organic lettuce farm where huge amounts of energy are used to keep the crop (picked by migrants) chilled. Organic is undeniably better in terms of pesticide pollution, but Pollan finds that the enormous farms from which Whole Foods buys are not so different from traditional industrial farms that supply McDonald’s. The catch-22 is that if organic doesn’t go industrial it will forever remain yuppie food, too rarified for many to afford. 04/10/06 - Eddington's Rocket: the jet train to shrink Britain Sir Rod Eddington, favours plans for a new high-speed rail link that could see jet-propelled trains ferrying passengers between Scotland and London in record times. The new trains would eschew conventional power sources and would instead be fired-up by a jet engine similar to those used in aircraft. A prototype, capable of travelling at 150mph, has been built in north America but manufacturers believe that, in the right conditions, it could achieve a much higher top speed. Virgin Pendolinos, operating at 125mph, are currently the fastest trains running up and down the country. He has also consulted officials at Bombardier, the Canadian maker of the jet train, and at Ultraspeed, a company that is proposing a magnetic levitation - or maglev - system for Britain. Ultraspeed claims its train could reach speeds of 311mph. A team of experts at Network Rail are now weighing up the merits of the competing technologies, as well as conventional high-speed trains such as the TGV in France, which travels at speeds of up to 186mph. The main advantage of the jet train is its autonomous power source - a 3,750kW gas turbine - which is much lighter than a diesel engine. However, this would only achieve maximum efficiency over longer distances. The turbine is also noisy and relies on expensive aviation fuel. Plans for a driverless maglev system - presented to Tony Blair in 2004 - involve carriages floating on electromagnetic “cushions” above a fixed guideway. Critics, however, claim maglev systems draw vast quantities of power and question the durability of the technology. The only commercial use of maglev is a 19-mile stretch linking Pudong airport to the outskirts of Shanghai in China. Government officials are believed to have reservations about a technology that has not been tested on longer routes. “We have seen in Europe that when you put a high-speed line in and shrink the distance between a capital and an outlying city . . . there are significant changes in the economic fortunes of the region,” he said. 04/10/06 - Why the United States will attack Iran in 2006 The master plan of the United States is to control the oil in the Middle East. Only two countries stood in the way of that plan: Iraq and Iran. Iraq has been neutralized and will remain impotent for the next decade because of civil war. Iran alone now stands in the way of the U.S. master plan. 04/09/06 - Eco-Motors - water > steam > gas intermixed efficiency (a translated page) Any engine of internal combustion not only in vain throws out the most part (70 - 80 %) of thermal energy received in work, moreover he even collapses, if will lose an opportunity, through system of cooling to give water his heat. On the other hand, receiving it warmly water, converted up to the steam in process of the boiling or volatilization, at usual atmospheric pressure increases itself in the volume in 1700 times. Thus obtained the steam can help one's pressure of working gas to actuate pistons or turbines of thermal engines and to give an essential increment of a power, the maximal twisting moment and efficiency of these motors. Besides an increase of power and fuel economy on 15 - 20 %, the injection of water also essentially improves cooling itself of the motor as cylinders are cooled by water not so much from outside, how many from within. 04/09/06 - Water Fence for runoff storage and a property barrier "I have a simple idea for storing rain water collected from any convenient roof via downpipes: slimline rectangular panels joined together which could double as a fence. If all terraced houses were built with this type of fencing they would have a constant supply of free water for their garden, topping up ponds etc. It's been quite some time that I have been trying to get a company to manufacture my idea. It's unfortunately too expensive to have a supply made. Most of our rainwater runs into soak-aways or into drains which is such a waste when we consider we are facing a water shortage crisis." In Germany, a not dissimilar system for water storage is being manufactured, in the form of plastic, interlocking blocks, which are built into a garden wall. There are also artificial "rocks", made from plastic, that double-up as rainholders, he says. "It makes huge sense to have people watering their gardens with rainwater," he says. But for the water-holding garden wall, he says "cost is the issue". "Compared to an upright barrel, or one sunk into the ground, the artificial wall is going to be much more expensive," he says. There is growing interest in water tanks below the ground, he says, which can have large capacity while remaining unobtrusive - and commercial schemes, such as gathering water to wash fleets of cars, can hold up to 20,000 litres of rainwater. But he says that Mr Jones is on the right track in terms of wanting to make better use of rainwater. A three-bedroom detached house has about 120,000 litres annual rainfall on its roof and guttering - and when parts of the country face water shortages, this is a scarce resource to see disappearing down the drain. And gardeners might be keen when they find out that the hosepipe ban doesn't apply to self-gathered water. 04/09/06 - Pedal Powered Electricity David Butcher makes some of his own power riding on a pedal-powered generator. It's not a terribly effective way to create the amount of energy the average person living a developed-world lifestyle needs, but the point is as much conceptual as practical, connecting us bodily with the amount of power that runs through our lives (and often goes wasted). "To make any kind of significant contribution to your energy supply, you must use the most efficient devices you possibly can. For example, a small refrigerator designed to be powered by solar power would be much more practical. A rule of thumb: if the device was designed to be powered by batteries, even BIG batteries, you might be able to keep up with it. "If your electric bill shows KWH (kilowatt-hours), take the number, multiply by 4 (assuming you can crank out 250 watts for an hour, which is very ambitious) and that is how many hours you will have to be in the saddle to create the same amount of power. Sorry, it can be depressing. The moral: Using less power is as important, if not more important, than making more." Most of all, I think having a sense of the kind of actual work done by the machines we use to power our civilization is itself a worldchanging realization, a sort of making visible the invisible. (via worldchanging.com) 04/09/06 - Sound bubbles in matter Isolated vibrations within a three-dimensional solid have been observed for the first time by researchers in the U.S. and Germany. The work could help explain how metals such as uranium behave when bent, compressed or heated. Normally, atoms in a crystal will pass their vibrational energy to their neighbors. But under some circumstances, theory predicts that a small patch of atoms could vibrate in place. This is the first time that these "lattice solitons" have been detected in a three-dimensional solid, said Michael Manley. The researchers used X-ray and neutron scattering experiments to identify lattice solitons in heated uranium crystals. The results show that the isolated vibrations play an important role in uranium metal, something no one had previously considered, Manley said. Lattice solitons should actually occur in all kinds of solid materials, but they are very hard to find because they appear and disappear so quickly, Manley said. The significance of the paper is that the researchers were able to see them, he said. Solitons, or solitary waves, were first described by Scottish scientist John Scott Russell in 1834 after seeing such a wave on a canal. In the late 1980s, scientists theorized that solitons might exist in solids and molecules, calling them intrinsic localized modes or discrete breathers, but had no physical evidence of their existence. 04/09/06 - Living on Impulse Play hooky, disappear for the weekend, have a fling, binge-shop like a Wall Street divorcée. Spontaneity can be a healthy defiance of routine, an expression of starved desire, some psychologists say. In recent years, studies have linked impulsiveness to higher risks of smoking, drinking and drug abuse. People who attempt suicide score highly on measures of impulsivity, as do adolescents with eating problems. Aggression, compulsive gambling, severe personality disorders and attention deficit problems are all associated with high impulsiveness, a problem that affects an estimated 9 percent of Americans. Now researchers have begun to resolve the contrary nature of impulsivity, identifying the elements that distinguish benign experimentation from self-destructive acts. When life is short and dangerous, and resources are scarce, there is a premium on quick response. The combination of sensation seeking and lack of deliberation characterizes millions of healthy people but appears to be extreme in those whose impulsivity leads to chronic trouble or mental illness, Dr. Flory said. "The way I think of it is that one factor has to do with the urges people have, and the other has to do with the brakes they apply," she said. 04/09/06 - Scuderi Air Hybrid engine The Scuderi design revives an evolutionary dead-end in automotive history known as the split-cycle engine. Each piston in a car's engine does four jobs: draw in air, compress it, burn fuel and push out the exhaust. A split-cycle engine divides those jobs between two pistons, one for pulling in air and compressing it, the other for burning fuel and pushing out exhaust. The results of that study convinced the Scuderis to pursue their father's goal. After more refinements, the Scuderi engine now compresses about 12 times more air than a similar conventional engine, allowing it to produce more power from the same amount of fuel and burn cleaner as well. Late last year, Sal was looking over his father's notes and found another invention. Because it moves air between pistons, Carmelo imagined the engine could store spare energy as compressed air instead of in expensive batteries. "The big impact is this is really the only hybrid system that makes sense economically," Sal Scuderi said. "We can make a hybrid system that is more effective than electric hybrids for a few hundred dollars versus several thousand dollars." 04/09/06 - Study Links Punishment to an Ability to Profit Sociologists have long known that communes and other cooperative groups usually collapse into bickering and disband if they do not have clear methods of punishing members who become selfish or exploitative. Now an experiment by a team of German economists has found one reason punishment is so important: Groups that allow it can be more profitable than those that do not. The study, appearing today in the journal Science, suggests that groups with few rules attract many exploitative people who quickly undermine cooperation. By contrast, communities that allow punishment, and in which power is distributed equally, are more likely to draw people who, even at their own cost, are willing to stand up to miscreants. Dr. Ostrom has done fieldwork with cooperatives around the world and said she often asked other researchers and students whether they knew of any long-lasting communal group that did not employ a system of punishment. "No one