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You are visitor # since January 1, 2003. August 2005 Plenum News 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. 08/31/05 - Steam Powered Bicycle (I saw several versions of these in the Smithsonian, quite fascinating! - JWD) homemade and handcrafted non-polluting vehicles built and sold from a minifactory out on the homestead somewhere-might still come to pass. For someone, somewhere has designed and built and actually operates a real, genuine steam powered bicycle. There it is . . . we've got the photo to prove it. The only trouble is that the guy who sent us this photo (and promised to do a test report and construction article for us) has dropped out of sight. What you see here-and the fact that this particular location in the upper Midwest-is all we know about the machine. Can anyone fill us in with further details? There are a lot of MOTHER readers anxious for the information. 08/31/05 - Stable Plasma Toroids for energy storage EPS has discovered a plasma toroid that remains stable without magnetic confinement, by using background gas pressure for confinement instead. These plasma toroids are observed to remain stable for thousands of times longer than classical plasma toroids, which opens the way for new clean energy applications. We are an early stage company working to develop the microfusion reactor. From this will come new applications, including a practical microfusion electricity generator, a low-cost space launch vehicle, a high-kinetic energy anti-missile beam, and practical zero-emission cars and jet aircraft. We are developing a six-kw power supply that is non-polluting, and uses no fossil fuels or nuclear fuels. In production it will cost about the same as present gasoline powered six-kw power supplies, but will run for a year continuously on about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of hydrogen and boron, compared to 7300 gallons of gasoline. It can be scaled up into a larger generating plant where it will produce electricity for about $0.0005 per kw-hr, compared to $0.05 per kw-hr today. This white paper describes a three-year project to build a prototype 6-kw power supply. 08/31/05 - Manhattan Project for new energy sources We are at the cusp in several technologies to fulfilling this clean energy dream. All that we need is the political leadership to shift our fiscal priorities. Thermionics: The direct conversion of heat to electricity has been at best only 5% efficient. Now with quantum tunneling chips we are talking 80% of Carnot efficiency. A good example is the proposed thermionic car design (PDF) of Borealis. The estimated well-to-wheel efficiency is over 50%. This compares to 13% for internal combustion and 27% for hydrogen fuel cells. This means a car that has a range of 1500 miles on one fill-up. Rodney T. Cox, president of Borealis, has told me that he plans to have this car developed within two years. Boeing has already used his Chorus motor drives on the nose gear of it's 767. The Borealis thermocouple power chips (and cool chips) applied to all the waste heat in our economy would make our unsustainable lifestyle more than sustainable. 08/31/05 - SuperCapacitors to push cars uphill In the search for alternate means of energy storage, it is necessary to look for devices that can deliver bursts of power in short periods of time. Batteries are good for delivering a steady power output. But in circumstances like for instance when a car is climbing uphill or when a car is accelerating, a burst of power should be provided from another source. This is where the supercapacitors are useful. Supercapacitors can discharge large amounts of energy very quickly (i.e. in milliseconds). Supercapacitors are also good at absorbing energy quickly. When brakes are applied to a moving vehicle, the kinetic energy of the vehicle is wasted as heat energy. This kinetic energy can in fact be used to charge a supercapacitor. Not only do supercapacitors charge and discharge very fast, they can store up to 10000 times more energy than ordinary capacitors. 08/31/05 - Lake-Source Cooling for very cheap air conditioning It works by drawing water from 272 feet below the surface, where temperatures are about 40 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The coldness of the lake water is transferred via heat exchangers to a separate, closed water supply that loops around downtown Toronto and to participating office towers. Thirty-five buildings have already signed on to the project, including the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s 1 million-square-foot retail outlet and 32-story head office. The company predicts it will save $416,000 a year on energy with the system. Participating buildings can expect to reduce the amount of energy used for cooling by an average of 75 percent, officials say. Dennis Fotinos, Enwave’s president, said the system will ultimately eliminate 40,000 tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions that conventional air conditioning would produce, and free more than 59 megawatts of electricity from the Ontario power grid. After heat exchangers use the lake water to lower the temperature of the cooling water, a central pumping station sends the cooling water around the city loop, branching off to each building. The cooling water eventually returns to each building’s basement, where other heat exchangers extract some of the heat before sending it back to the pumping station to repeat the cycle. The university system was designed to last 100 years - typical air conditioners have a life span of 15 to 20 years - to justify the initial investment of $58 million. Since it started in 2000, the project has reduced campus cooling costs by 87 percent. 08/31/05 - Pizza company runs their trucks on used oil A Madison pizza company is running two delivery vehicles on waste oil from the fryers. Glass Nickel Pizza creates 240 gallons of waste oil each month in its fryers which it can use to drive 3,000 miles a week -- avoiding high gas prices. Co-owner Tim Nicholson said he used to pay $50 a month for disposal of the oil. Converting a diesel car to run on vegetable oil costs less than $1,500. Even though the waste oil is free from restaurants, you do have to filter it before it can be used in the engine. Glass Nickle driver manager Ben Thomlison said they can drive the cars for nine hours without shutting them off. 08/31/05 - Up to $4,000 off your taxes for going Solar Homeowners can put in a photovoltaic system and/or a solar-powered hot water system, and get a federal tax credit worth 30% of the systems' cost, up to a credit of $2,000 per system. There are a couple of catches: The heating system can't be for a pool or hot tub, and the federal credit applies to the net system cost after any state incentives. The good part is that this new federal break is a credit - not a deduction - meaning it reduces your tax bill directly, dollar for dollar. So, if you install both eligible solar systems in your house, you can knock $4,000 off your federal tax bill. And if you have more credit than you owe in tax, you can carry it over and use it to defray next year's federal tax bill. (This relates to the prior post about solar heating tax rebates - JWD) 07/30/05 - 10 square foot solar collector weighs 19 pounds SolarRoofs.com recently introduced a new line of solar water heating collectors and systems. Called the Fireball 10-01, these 10 square foot collectors weigh only 19 pounds! Despite their small footprint and light weight they generate the energy equal to a 500 Watt solar Electric "PV" system, at a fraction of the price. The collectors are made from high performance copper absorbers and double wall polycarbonate glazing. Because of their low weight they can ship by UPS or FedEx ground and feature patented "Disappearing Headers" for damage free shipping. SolarRoofs.com refers to the 10-01 as "convenient building blocks to power and energy independence" These "Handy Sized" collectors are ideal for residential, RV and marine applications and can be matched with a PV system for increasing overall solar energy system performance. MSRP $295.00US 08/31/05 - Nothing resists Honeys curative properties Australian researchers have found it is effective as an antibiotic cream to prevent infections when applied to catheter sites in kidney dialysis patients. Kidney specialist David Johnson said honey also had an advantage over the commonly used antibiotic ointment, mupirocin, in that hospital "superbugs" such as staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as Golden Staph, had not developed resistance to it. "There are no documented cases of honey-resistant bacteria," Professor Johnson said yesterday. Unfounded botulism fears and honey in legend In countless cultures, from ancient Egypt to modern Burma, babies have been given a little taste of this "molten gold" after they are born, not just for energy but to offer spiritual protection. In ancient Friesland in Germany it was believed that smearing honey on a child's lips was what made it fully alive. Less superstitiously, in the 1930s a number of doctors in Finland and the US published studies demonstrating the benefits of honey to under-ones, since it was more easily digested than refined sugar. During the US Depression, honey was used by public health officials to bring undernourished infants in New Jersey back from the grave - half a teaspoon at first, then a little more and a little more, until their emaciated bodies recovered strength. 08/31/05 - Chickens as 'Pharm Animal' bio-factories Origen Therapeutics reports in Saturday's issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology that it implanted human genes into chickens so that they lay eggs carrying vast numbers of custom-made human ``monoclonal antibodies'' to fight cancer. Furthermore, these antibodies had more potent cell-killing abilities than those produced using conventional techniques. There are many benefits to using egg-laying chickens over the traditional approach of growing cells in vats, according to Etches. It speeds up the process, simplifies it and cuts production costs. The result could be less expensive medicine for patients. The goal is for their monoclonal antibodies, when injected into sick people, to hunt down and disable diseased cells. Because the human body does not perceive these antibodies as chicken-like, it does not develop an immunity to them. The chicken embryonic stem cells were then implanted into chick embryos. When the embryos matured into chickens, they laid eggs containing antibody. This is then separated from the egg white, creating a pure protein. 08/31/05 - 35 block sustainable neighborhood in Portland Lloyd Crossing may serve as a blueprint remedy for all cities faced with rising air- and water-quality standards, rapid urban development, and the need for more power production and water-treatment plants. Though the plan includes a stand-alone demonstration project, most of the proposed changes reach for the future without breaking with the past. By adding local infrastructure to capture storm-water runoff and supply renewable energy, the neighborhood will reduce its dependency on the city's sewage and power systems without getting rid of old pipes and lines. Plans are to; Carve out bioswales to collect street runoff - Treat wastewater in the neighborhood and reuse gray water - Build according to stringent LEED silver standards (materials should come from within 500 miles of the project site and undergo life-cycle assessment) - Deploy photovoltaics to supplement power - Turn to wind turbines for energy - Store and share heat in an underground thermal loop - Design new buildings to leverage natural forces. 08/31/05 - Butterbur plant as superior treatment for pollen allergies In a double-blind study of 330 patients, Andreas Schapowal of the Allergy Clinic at Landquart, Switzerland, and colleagues found Butterbur extract was as effective as conventional antihistamine, without any of the unpleasant side effects, such as drowsiness. Over 10 years Schapowal and his colleagues have bred a special version of the Butterbur plant, with high concentrations of petasine in its leaves. "The extract from the modified plant has a significant effect in blocking the allergic reaction and is at least as effective as antihistamine," says Schapowal. Butterbur is available in Switzerland and likely to be licensed across the rest of Europe and the US within two years. 08/30/05 - Portable Solar Rechargers for handheld devices NOW your Apple can be fully juiced up by leaving it out in the sun. The SOLIO solar-power charger has been developed to make sure your iPod, Mini or Shuffle never runs on empty. As well as charging your music player, it can also provide power for mobile phones, digital cameras, PDAs and gaming handhelds using extra adaptors bought from www.solio.com 08/30/05 - BioFuel Pellet heaters Owing to the technological progress, the cost of producing one kWh of power should fall to 7.5 cents for biogas and 6 cents for solid biomass by 2030. The prospects for bioenergies are especially positive in the heat market, where they already contribute more than 90% to the provision of heat from renewable energies. Pellet units, in particular, which utilise handy-sized biomaterials, have great potential. Thanks to alternative heating systems, homeowners no longer have to rely on oil and gas. Moreover, biomass heating plants with small district heating systems are an interesting alternative for municipal and commercial heat supply. Pellet heating systems are already operating at lower fuel costs; in this case, a doubling of the oil price would prove far more costly than the disadvantage of higher start-up costs for the heating systems. BioFuel pellets - The recent development of gasifier pellet stoves and furnaces (see www.pelletstove.com) provides a practical pathway for grass biofuel pellets to be converted into heating energy. These appliances are capable of burning moderately high ash pelleted agricultural fuels at 81-87% efficiency. In this system, switchgrass pellets are used much like wood pellets and provide fuel conversion efficiencies and particulate emissions in the same range as modern oil furnaces. 08/30/05 - Chinese demand for oil fuels potential global flashpoint With its economy booming, China is striving to meet its enormous energy needs by intensifying its ties to major energy producing countries and seeking to buy a wide array of foreign oil and natural gas assets. “China will never be able to satisfy its oil demand through foreign acquisitions,” says Gavin Thompson of the Beijing office of British oil consultants Wood Mackenzie. ”They are now getting 55-60% of their oil imports from the Middle East. In the future that proportion will only increase, because the Middle East is where the oil is.” China’s growing thirst for oil will place a greater strain on the world’s top supplier, Saudi Arabia, at the very time doubts are being raised about the kingdom’s ability to substantially increase production. Should output falter in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East nations, some analysts warn of growing tension - or even conflicts - over access to diminishing resources between China and the world’s biggest oil importers, the United States and Japan, unless alternative sources of energy are found. 08/30/05 - Why is lightning jagged? The spark from static electricity measures a centimeter or less in length, a lightning channel can span five kilometers or more. (Also, cloud-to-ground lightning involves electrical currents on the order of tens of thousands of amps. In contrast, a circuit breaker for a common household circuit is usually rated at 20 amps.) Because air is normally an electrical insulator, it must break down so that the conductive channel can form in order for a lightning flash to occur. This breakdown of the air between the cloud and the ground does not happen all at once, however. Instead, it happens in discrete steps of about 50 meters, with each step taking about one microsecond and about 50 microseconds elapsing between steps. Because of the discrete nature of this process, the initial channel of a lightning flash is called a stepped leader. The lightning channel will tend to extend out to regions of higher conductivity (as shown in the figure by some of the branches actually pointing slightly upward). As a result, the relatively short step size and the random distribution of such regions of higher conductivity render the channel jagged rather than smooth. 08/30/05 - Is this oil crisis a direct result of 9/11 Arab divesting from US investments? In the United States, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are seen as the catalyst for a period of fear, war and economic worry. But in the oil-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, Sept. 11 is increasingly viewed as the event that kicked off a galloping economic boom, when Arabs divested from America and reinvested at home. Arab investors pulled tens of billions of dollars out of the United States. They were angered by perceived American hostility toward Arabs. They worried their assets would be frozen by U.S. counter-terror measures. And U.S. markets happened to be plummeting while economies in the Gulf were on the upswing, buoyed by rising oil prices. Since late 2001, economies in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries -- Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- have soared, with stock markets up a collective 400 percent. Over the same period, the Standard & Poor's 500 rose 24 percent. Most of the credit for the wealth influx here is due to the near-tripling of oil prices since 2001 to current levels of more than $67 a barrel. ``The Americans shot themselves in the foot by being so harsh,'' said Beshr Bakheet, owner of Bakheet Financial Advisers in Riyadh. ``Do you want to put your money in a country that is involved in wars all over the globe? Not only Saudis, but a lot of people aren't comfortable with this.'' Investments pulled out of the United States were redirected into stocks and real estate in the Gulf and the wider Middle East, laying the ground for a boom that accelerated as the price of oil shot skyward. Oil money is now bankrolling more than $100 billion in construction in the Gulf this year alone... 08/30/05 - DIY fibrogen facelift can cost up to $6,283.55 (Can you say 'collagen'? - JWD) The procedure involves self injecting skin cells around wrinkles and other signs of ageing. According to some doctors the injections can take years off a person's real age. The procedure involves a small sample of skin being taken from behind the ear. The so-called fibroblast cells are then given the nutrients they need to multiply in a laboratory. The cells can be frozen in liquid nitrogen and then thawed whenever a person needs a shot to hold back the years. Many cosmetic surgeons say fat taken from elsewhere in a patient's body can fill out wrinkles just as well - without the expense or hassle of using a hi-tech laboratory. But it is thought fibroblasts are longer lasting - producing collagen, the substance that gives skin its natural elasticity. 08/30/05 - Mice regrow hearts and other damaged organs SCIENTISTS have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate, the US-based researchers say. Their discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain. "When we injected fetal liver cells taken from those animals into ordinary mice, they too gained the power of regeneration. We found this persisted even six months after the injection." A similar phenomenon was observed when the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially destroyed. The researchers believe the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring their animals' survival rate. However, the mice are only 18 months old, and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach firm conclusions. 08/30/05 - Bush considering tapping oil reserves to compensate for hurricane damage Eight refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi with a daily capacity of 1.7 million barrels of crude oil were also shut. They account for about 9 percent of U.S. refining capacity. Last year, the U.S. government loaned 5.4 million barrels of crude oil to refiners from the stockpile following supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Ivan. The stockpile consists of more than 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in underground salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. The oil industry was also reeling from the closure of the Capline pipeline, which transports crude oil from Louisiana to Illinois area refineries, and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a deepwater port used by many oil tankers. But the release of oil from the SPR is unlikely to tame U.S. gasoline prices because a shortage of refining capacity has kept supplies tight, said Seth Kleinman, an analyst for PFC Energy in Washington. "It's refining capacity that's the biggest problem right now and they don't have any of that in the SPR," Kleinman said. 08/30/05 - Bloodroot paste claimed to cure cancer (Thanks to Gary Vesperman for sharing this - JWD) Raber's paste is described by the medical board as "a caustic, tissue-destroying substance that eats away human skin and flesh." On his Web site, Raber displays graphic before-and-after photos of those who have used the paste, including women with scabs on their breasts and men with scarred faces. "The herb does not kill healthy tissue," Kelly Raber said, smearing some of the paste on his nose. "Instead, it performs a process known as apoptosis that allows the (cancer) cells to self-destruct." He said his father's paste is being singled out because it's an old remedy that can't be patented and therefore wouldn't generate large profits for the medical establishment or giant pharmaceutical companies. Dan Raber was named in a state complaint filed against Dr. Lois March, an ear, nose and throat specialist who risks losing her medical license for allegedly providing pain medication to 12 patients who had received Raber's bloodroot treatments. The board said seven of the patients had breast cancer and that the doctor knew or should have known that Raber's use of bloodroot "mutilated their breasts and caused excruciating pain." March has denied any wrongdoing. "These are wild accusations that aren't true," she said when reached by telephone at her office in nearby Cordele. 08/30/05 - Terrorism drives the pump We have limited our efforts to make ourselves more energy independent. It is well known that we are dependent on the crude oil that comes from under the sands of several Middle Eastern nations. These are some of the same nations that also export terrorists, incite terroristic activities and promote the hatred of Western society. The oil they pump, that we then import, runs our economies and creates, in many ways, the lifestyle we are used to and have enjoyed for many decades. So not only are we as a nation and society harmed by the terrorists as people and the damage and injury they cause, but we are also terrorized by the fact that we need their oil and they know it. We have short-circuited research, development and implementation of alternative fuels and energy sources since the late 1970s in favor of crude oil and gas that is ultimately in limited supply. And because we have done that and continue to limit such efforts to make ourselves more energy independent, we will continue to be terrorized on two fronts - with the terrorists themselves and the organizations behind them and by the governments and countries with the shifting sands that know we need their oil. 08/29/05 - 'New' hydrogen production method for credit card size power cells The researchers developed the new method earlier this year and envision a future system in which pellets of hydrogen-releasing material would be contained in disposable credit-card-size cartridges. Once the pellets were used up, a new cartridge would be inserted into devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, notebook computers, digital cameras, handheld medical diagnostic devices and defibrillators. The new technique combines two previously known methods for producing hydrogen. The previous methods have limitations making them impractical when used alone, but those drawbacks are overcome when the methods are combined, Varma said. One of the methods was invented by Herbert C. Brown, a chemist and Nobel laureate from Purdue who discovered a compound called sodium borohydride during World War II. The compound contains sodium, boron and hydrogen. He later developed a technique for producing hydrogen by combining sodium borohydride with water and a catalyst. The method, however, has a major drawback because it requires expensive catalysts such as ruthenium. The other method involves a chemical reaction in which tiny particles of aluminum are combined with water in such a way that the aluminum ignites, releasing hydrogen during the combustion process. This method does not require an expensive catalyst, but it yields insufficient quantities of hydrogen to be practical for fuel cell applications. "Our solution is to combine both methods by using what we call a triple borohydride-metal-water mixture, which does not require a catalyst and has a high enough hydrogen yield to make the method promising for fuel cell applications," Varma said. "So far we have shown in experiments that we can convert 6.7 percent of the mixture to hydrogen, which means that for every 100 grams of mixture we can produce nearly 7 grams of hydrogen, and that yield is already better than alternative methods on the market." 08/29/05 - Alternative therapies, what works with the purely objective proof of animals? In spite of (or perhaps because of) the ongoing debate about the merits of chiropractic, acupuncture, and other "alternative" treatments, these and other modalities are exploding in popularity. First embraced by human medicine, methods ranging from herbs to homeopathy are now being used on the horses and house pets of enthusiastic devotees. Even horse owners who themselves have never had their spines adjusted or their ligaments lasered have turned to non-traditional practitioners when conventional methods failed to cure persistent, mysterious lamenesses or other problems. It's easy to see why a frustrated owner who's spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on conventional treatments and lost months of precious riding and training time, only to see little or no improvement, might become eager to give alternative treatments a try; after all, nothing else worked. 08/29/05 - Biodiesel has a few problems The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission began using biodiesel in 1999. "We introduced it in Philadelphia, a non-attainment city (for clean air standards)," said Michael McClurkin, turnpike operations manager. "We wanted to be a good neighbor, even though what we are doing is minimal." About half the turnpike's fleet of 300 vehicles runs on a mixture of 20% soy oil and 80% diesel fuel, according to McClurkin. Crews prefer the pleasant french-fry odor, he said. Engines last longer and belch less smoke. Biodiesel is a better lubricant than petroleum diesel, according to McClurkin. New federal regulations call for removing sulfur from diesel fuel. "That's going to be a promoter for biodiesel," McClurkin said. "You take sulfur out and there's not going to be any lubricity at all." The alternative fuel is not without its problems. Initially biodiesel cleans sludge from fuel tanks and so clogs fuel filters. It also costs more than diesel - 31 cents a gallon more last year and 42 to 49 cents more this year. "This is a very young industry," Haas said. "The chemistry is not rocket science." The chemistry, however, mixes potentially hazardous lye and alcohol with oil or grease. Biodiesel fuels the farm's John Deere tractor, irrigation pump, Volkswagen Jetta and Dodge pickup truck. "When the weather is good we'll run 100% (biodiesel)," he said. "It splash mixes really well" in the fuel tank with diesel. Steiman is planning a how-to-make-biodiesel workshop for September. Safety will be stressed. A date has not been set. A backyard processor can be made from an old water heater for about $400, he said. 08/29/05 - Farmers use a LOT of fuel Harvest is the peak season for energy consumption on farms. Semitrailer trucks, tractors, combines and other vehicles that transport crops from the field to storage bins and to market use diesel, the farm fuel of choice, or gasoline - requiring 50 to more than 250 gallons at fill-up. In addition, farmers use propane, a petroleum product, to dry grain, and they buy fertilizer, also derived from petroleum, for fall application to fields to be planted in the spring. Fuel used on the farm costs less than consumers pay at the pump because farmers do not have to pay taxes on the fuel. Still, they are paying more than $2 per gallon, more than twice as much as a year ago. Mike Berdo , who farms near Washington, Ia., with his brother, Dan, and their father, John, estimates that his family's operation will consume 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel this year. For the Berdos, the price increases that have become a nearly weekly occurrence will mean at least $6,000 in added expenses for fuel alone. Higher fertilizer and propane prices also will add to the family's costs. "A lot of guys could burn 200 to 300 gallons of fuel a day, and what's farm fuel at now - $2.15?" said Tom Fagen, a salesman for Greenfield Implement Co. 08/29/05 - What to do when the lights go out Blackouts disable heating and air-conditioning systems, most cordless phones, refrigerators, and well-water pumps. A cold or overheated house or apartment can quickly become uninhabitable. Frozen pipes can burst and cost thousands of dollars in damage, while thawing or warming food can spoil. Short-term outages may be an inconvenience. But longer ones can be life-threatening, especially for those who depend on special medical equipment. The right blackout protection can keep you safe, comfortable, and in touch with the outside world. A portable generator and a typical transfer switch let you power selected home circuits during an outage. Homeowners can make blackouts more bearable by connecting a portable gasoline-powered generator into their home's wiring system. Models from Coleman, Generac, Honda, and other makers that supply the 5,000 watts or so needed for heating systems and other essentials cost $600 or more. Fuel use at 50-percent load is roughly one-half gallon of gas per hour. Kerosene heaters, sold at Sears, Wal-Mart, and other stores, cost about $120 to upwards of $200 for UL-listed models with enough output to heat a small house. Portable propane heaters certified for indoor use--about $100--typically use sealed 1-pound fuel cylinders that can be easier to handle than liquid fuel. One we tested provided about 6,000 British thermal units per hour of heat for four hours. For emergency lighting, forget candles, a flashlight and fresh batteries are your best bet. Newer designs include models with xenon, krypton, and halogen bulbs designed to provide more light than conventional bulbs. Other models use a light-emitting diode, which extends battery life by drawing less current. One we evaluated supplied 20 hours of light on its high-beam setting and should run 200 hours on low using a 9-volt battery. But its narrow beam required us to sweep the light from side to side to see obstacles in a dark room. (Wonder if a 'beam expander' as used to ignite forest fires from a helicopter using a laser might work to widen this high beam LED? - JWD) 08/29/05 - Fan Induction Blower box invention to increase horsepower and efficiency An Air Force Reserve non-commissioned officer at the Aeronautical Systems Center's F-16 Systems Group is awaiting final patent approval for an invention he began designing and developing nearly 13 years ago. Staff Sgt. Kevin Patillo designed and developed the fan induction blower box, or FIBB, as a cost-effective means for achieving the same increase in horsepower and preservation of fuel economy offered by the current belt-driven supercharger and gas-driven turbocharger options. Sergeant Patillo's electric-driven device fits inside of the standard air filter compartment found in all vehicles and increases the amount of air pulled into the engine. This increases the power and reduces the car's dependency on both unleaded and diesel fuel. The sergeant was able to produce and offer his performance-enhancing alternative for 27 to 33 percent less than the $1,500 to $3,000 super- and turbochargers. It has proven a 10 to 20 horsepower increase and a 7 percent reduction in fuel economy, less than what the other two options boast, the sergeant said. 08/29/05 - Battery technology inhibiting use of electric cars It's not that car makers can't build a car that will run on an alternative fuel, it's just that they cannot make it anywhere near economically viable. That's something Ford found out with the expensive experiment with electric cars which saw them go into partnership with a Norwegian inventor to bring us the heavily subsidised, electrically powered Think car. Ford poured its money and resources into researching battery technology but the size of the battery required prohibited anything outside of a town pool car application. "We got as far as we could," a spokesman said yesterday. This range, in spite of the availability of advanced materials, cutting edge technology and sophisticated electronic controls, is little better than was achievable a century ago when the first electric cars tried to challenge the supremacy of petrol burners. 08/29/05 - Cross-country biodiesel bus promotes alternative fuels "Bio-diesel, you can use in any diesel car, and with a few conversions you can run waste vegetable oil in any diesel car also," Gregor said. Gregor wants the Big Three automakers to change what makes American vehicles get up and go down the road. He says bio-diesel and vegetable oil fueled cars are better for the environment and cheaper than gasoline. "So this is perfect timing as gas prices are rising and people are so sick of being dependent on oil and paying so much for it. So this is a perfect time to get really high efficient vehicles and get alternative fuels on the market." Getting Ford or General Motors to go down that path may be difficult, industry analysts say, mostly because diesel engines are not very popular in the United States. Daimler-Chrysler is already making headway, those analysts say, because of its European foundation. Diesel is cheaper in Europe and gets better mileage. Ford and GM have American roots. They are more reluctant to change and say it may cost too much to change to the alternative fuels. 08/29/05 - Texans working on manure and ethanol for fuel The Panda Group of Dallas plans to fuel a $120 million ethanol plant set to open next year in Hereford with cow manure and other waste. The company said it will realize an energy savings equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil per day turning manure and cotton gin waste into clean-burning fuel to power the plant. Biomass is renewable organic matter, such as manure and crops like corn, grain sorghum and soybeans, all of which can be processed into ethanol. Nearly 5 million head of cattle come to about 100 area feedyards each year. While there, they produce billions of pounds of manure. "It's almost too good not to use," said David Parker, a professor of agriculture at West Texas A&M University. Researchers at a feedlot are trying to figure out the best process and mix of manure to create the most useable heat and energy. Sweeten said manure contains at best about a third to a quarter of the energy value as coal, so transporting it far from where it's produced is impractical. Thus, Sweeten said manure-generated energy would only be used regionally. "You don't get as much bang for your buck" with manure compared to coal, he said. 08/29/05 - Japan experimenting with natural gas to liquid (GTL) GTL is created by converting natural gas into a liquid form. It is seen as a promising alternative to petroleum, which has become less attractive due to high crude oil prices and tighter environmental regulations. GTL is also more efficient than petroleum-derived fuels and contains virtually no sulfur compounds. It is especially promising as an alternative to diesel fuel. Nippon Steel and others are working on GTL technology that can make the fuel without removing the excess carbon dioxide contained in natural gas. They will build in Japan a proof-of-concept plant beginning next fiscal year, according to the report. Currently, GTL is expensive to make. But if a technology for manufacturing GTL that eliminates the need for CO2 removal equipment can be developed, the cost of making the fuel would be lower, and it might be more economical if crude oil prices stay high. 08/28/05 - Biological fuel cells Incredulous as it may seem, an almost no-cost alternative to costly fuel or batteries to produce electricity are mosquitoes and cockroaches. A young breed of scientists from Feati University recently discovered a way that these common household pests can produce energy. The invention, a biological fuel cell, is a device that uses pests’ enzymes (a protein found in all living things) to directly convert biochemical energy into electricity. According to Lopez, bacteria containing the enzyme Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD), such as E-coli, are the effective catalysts in biofuel cells. Through research and consultations with other chemists, their team discovered that several local organisms like mosquitoes, rats, cockroaches and flies all bear this enzyme. Using beakers as prototypes of fuel cells, the researchers tested various insects to catalyze the reaction (a pest can produce 0.5 to 1.25 volts per bial), but cock roaches gave them the highest amperage, the strength of electrical current needed for an equipment to work. After combining the pests with the redox chemicals (chemicals needed to create the reaction in which both oxidation and reduction take place), and placing them in the fuel cells, they arranged the cells in a series circuit connection. This set-up connected to any low-voltage apparatus such as a 12V fluorescent lamp or a 24V stove, produced energy to power both. 08/28/05 - Food scraps fuel cell A battery that runs on scraps of food could fuel a battery providing electricity to top up your home's supply, say UK researchers. Although such "microbial fuel cells" (MFCs) have been developed in the past, they have always proved extremely inefficient and expensive. Inside the Walkman-sized battery, a colony of E. coli bacteria produce enzymes that break down carbohydrates, releasing hydrogen atoms. The cell also contains chemicals that drive a series of redox, or reduction and oxidation reactions, stripping electrons from the hydrogen atoms and delivering them steadily to the fuel cell's anode. This creates a voltage that can be used to power a circuit. When a number of the cells are connected in series, they could power domestic appliances, running a 40-watt bulb for eight hours on about 50 grams of sugar. By experimenting with different anode materials, the UWE team have figured out how to make their system work: they dump the bacteria and redox chemicals directly into the cell. In its current form, the UWE team says its organic battery can produce eight times as much power as any previous MFC. This simplified MFC costs as little as £10 to make. Right now, their fuel cell runs only on sugar cubes, since these produce almost no waste when broken down, but they aim to move on to carrot power. "It has to be able to use raw materials, rather than giving it a refined fuel," says Melhuish. 08/28/05 - Magnetic buoys tap waves to generate power "There's a real good chance that Oregon could turn into kind of the focal point in the United States for wave energy development and I think that would be a boon to the economy," said Gary Cockrum, spokesman for the Central Lincoln People's Utility District. How it would work: Oregon State University's system uses a field of buoys that harnesses the movement of ocean waves to make electricity. 1. An electric coil is mounted to the inside of a buoy, while a magnetic shaft is anchored to the ocean floor. 2. Waves cause the buoy and coil to move up and down relative to the magnetic field of the shaft, generating electricity. The power then is delivered via an electrical cable. 08/28/05 - Willies BioDiesel This is what happens when you're the mayor, judge and founder of your own town 57 miles south of Dallas on Interstate 35E. Not just that, but you've decided to launch BioWillie, a soybean oil-based diesel fuel endorsed by a man whom truckers rank third only after God and country. Years after the novelty of Jacuzzis at a truck stop wore off, Carl and his quirky Corner are back on the map. Of course, the BioWillie hoopla means Carl gets second billing for the first time at his own truck stop. But even if Willie is the name on everyone's tongue - and on the restaurant, theater, albums, T-shirts, pictures, pamphlets and just about every piece of paraphernalia in the place - Carl is the workhorse keeping him there. Striking out on his own is Carl's forte, what makes him go, and in this case, return: "My git-up-and-go done got up and went, and now it's come back." So has his ticking brain: He wants to build a biodiesel refinery to supply the truck stop. That way, he figures, the truck stop could be self-sufficient, even get its power from a BioWillie-fueled generator. "We're gonna get biodiesel out to the people," he says. Carl adds he feels no competition. As of late July, the Love's Travel Stop 40 miles up the road in Midlothian was already out-pumping Carl's Corner by more than 5,000 gallons of BioWillie a day, Bell says. Carl says he's thrilled. 08/28/05 - 12 foot high grass grown for fuel GIANT tropical elephant grasses are to be planted across large swathes of British countryside under plans to encourage farmers to switch to crops that produce energy rather than food. The plan would see at least 800,000 acres covered with plantations of the grass, which grows to a height of 12ft and has razor-sharp leaves. A new generation of power stations that will burn the grass is being built. One at Eccleshall, Staffordshire, is close to completion. Its output will be equivalent to the power needs of 2,000 homes, and hundreds of farmers in the surrounding area will be asked to switch land from arable crops to elephant grass. “It’s also really good for wildlife with deer, pheasants and other animals using it for cover,” he said. 08/28/05 - Are current fuel cost trends a spike or the future? At what price per gallon does the cost of gasoline jump from annoying to scary? The current price is just now touching my personal grumble point and shows every sign of rising further. Yet looking around the pump, I'm just not seeing the kind of raw outrage that characterized previous price spikes. No fist fights at the pumps yet. Gas prices can't be considered truly alarming until people tell each other dark stories of oil conspiracies. Of the tankers parked offshore creating artificial shortages and poised to dock only when the price reaches a level of outrageousness predetermined by lawyers and computers. The so-called pessimists see a permanent oil crunch killing off stuff they don't like anyway. It would spell the end to ugly SUVs the size of shrimp boats, discourage urban sprawl, create local jobs, make us live on a more tasteful scale and convince a few places to get around to installing bicycle racks so we don't have to lock our bikes to no-parking signs. The techno-optimists see us living just the way we are now, except with way-cooler stuff. With hydrogen fuel cells, we could build Hummers the size of dump trucks! Power-up the cold-fusion plants! New extraction technology means those nice Canadians could be the new oil power. Of course, before all these cool-in-the-long-run things get to happen, gas will have to be something like $9 a gallon and bad, bad things will result. 08/28/05 - Weaning the world from petroleum will take decades With oil and gasoline prices pushing to new highs and global demand projected to grow faster than production capacity, consumers are understandably puzzled by an ongoing energy enigma. Simply put: Why haven’t alternative energy sources - from renewables like solar and wind power to alternative fossil fuels like coal - kicked in to take up the slack? Now, with a surge in oil demand coming from huge developing economies like China and India -- on top of continued growth in demand from the developed world - the world’s oil producers are struggling to keep up. For the first time in its history, OPEC is producing at just about full capacity and can't keep enough oil flowing to curb the recent rise in prices. 08/28/05 - Mayo Clinic study finds acupuncture relieves symptoms of fibromyalgia Fibromyalgia patients treated with six sessions of acupuncture experienced significant symptomatic improvement compared to a group given simulated acupuncture sessions according to a new Mayo Clinic study. "There's not a cure available, so patients are often left somewhat frustrated by continuing pain and fatigue," he says. "Acupuncture is one of the few things shown to be effective for these symptoms. It may be particularly attractive to patients who are unable to take medications because of intolerable side effects." 08/28/05 - Converting to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Proponents of the alternative fuel say drivers spend much less to fill up CNG vehicles that offer the same performance, power and fuel economy as gasoline models. Mark Phillips purchased a CNG minivan four years ago and two full-size vans last year for his heating and cooling business in Coshocton. The change has saved him about $125 a month, he said. Four years ago, it cost about $1.19 for the equivalent of a gallon of natural gas, Phillips said; today he fills up for about $1.39 per gallon equivalent. "It's becoming more obvious to the public that we're simply paying too high of a price for importing oil," Spofforth said. "Whether it's compressed natural gas or E85 (ethanol) or biodiesel, you're going to see more of this in the future, given the price of gasoline and diesel fuel." Several automakers have produced CNG vehicles including DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM and Honda, but often they are available only by special order. King buys used vehicles at auction for resale. He sold about 40 last year. A 2002 Ford Contour he has in stock now with 12,000 miles on it has a sticker price of about $6,500. It's a little more expensive than a CNG-only vehicle because it also has a gasoline tank, he said. King also will convert vehicles running on gasoline to CNG. But with a $6,000 to $7,000 conversion cost, more people buy used models that already incorporate the technology, he said. 08/28/05 - Shame, not guilt, related to substance-abuse problems Shame is the tendency to feel bad about yourself following a specific event. It appears that individuals who are prone to shame when dealing with a variety of life problems may also have a tendency to turn toward alcohol and other drugs to cope with this feeling. Guilt, or the tendency to feel bad about a specific behavior or action, was largely unrelated to substance-use problems. This is one of the first studies to scientifically validate the importance of shame versus guilt and their relation to alcohol and drugs. Clinically, this study suggests a point of intervention for the treatment of substance-use problems. Specifically, counselors and other medical providers might effectively work with clients toward decreasing shame-proneness and enhancing guilt-proneness. 08/28/05 - Italians converting to Solar (The USA should look into this kind of cogeneration incentive to really jolt people into wanting to upgrade - JWD) Italian homeowners, condominium buildings and private businesses can, under certain conditions, profit by selling solar power to energy companies at a handsome, government-guaranteed price. Under the incentive system, approved last month, surplus energy produced by photovoltaic panels can be sold at triple the average rate set by electricity giants like Enel and Edison or by local energy distributors. Industry Minister Claudio Scajola predicted that the average family could save as much as $1,100 annually in electricity bills. If there is energy to spare, the family can sell the excess. Enel SpA, Italy's largest utility, estimates a single family installing $24,366 worth of panels across about 28 square metres of sun-exposed surface could recoup its expenses in 10 years and reap 8.6 per cent annual yield on the investment. Italy's new solar program envisages incentives for installation of panels for a total output of 100 megawatts over the next few years, a goal described as modest by utilities and environmental groups. Enel noted that the 100 megawatt goal represents only 25 per cent of what will be installed in Germany this year alone. 08/28/05 - New insights on how UV damages DNA In the current issue of the journal Nature, Bern Kohler and his colleagues report that DNA dissipates the energy from ultraviolet (UV) radiation in a kind of energy wave that travels up the edge of the DNA molecule, as if the energy were climbing one side of the helical DNA "ladder." The finding lends insight into how DNA damage occurs along the ladder's edge. The new study shows that UV energy moves vertically, between successive bases. The Nature paper builds on work from five years ago, when the associate professor of chemistry and his team first discovered that single DNA bases convert harmful UV energy to heat to prevent sun damage in the same way that sunscreen molecules protect sunbathers. Here's what he and his team suspect is happening during the UV energy wave: as sunlight warms our skin, UV photons are absorbed by the bases, causing their electrons to vibrate. These high-energy vibrations nudge the atoms in the bases around, but only along one edge of the DNA ladder at a time. If all goes well, the DNA returns to normal after the energy wave passes. But some of the time, the atoms don't return to their original positions, and new chemical bonds are formed. Scientists know that such accidental bonds create "photolesions" - injuries that prevent DNA from replicating properly. The details of the process aren't fully understood, but studies suggest that photolesions cause genetic mutations that lead to diseases such as cancer. 08/27/05 - How to make Hydrogen from Drano (sodium hydroxide) and run your engine (Totally fascinating file with an added bonus of many tips to save on mileage and protect your car. The information originates from Todd Morrill, a 25 year automotive professional. It could be used to mix hydrogen with gas to increase efficiency and lower pollution - JWD) The present invention relates to production of hydrogen gas by reacting aluminum with water in the presence of sodium hydroxide as a catalyst. The process is carried out at room temperature and produces lot of heat and hydrogen gas of high purity. The invention also relates to using a simple hydrogen generator which uses water and aluminum particles as fuel, and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as a catalyst. The aluminum used in the reaction comprises aluminum foil, electrical wire, beverage cans and other similar aluminum waste. Mixture of water (H20) and Sodium Hydroxide are added to reaction tank then aluminum is added to start releasing hydrogen and heat. Since top of reaction tank is closed, hydrogen gas travels through outlet line into the water lock, water lock (hydrogen flashback arrestor) is added as a safety feature to lower the possibilty of an explosion should an engine backfire occur. It also filters the hydrogen gas to help remove sodium hydroxide vapors. Most cars and trucks have aluminum engine components and since we know it will dissolve aluminum this would not be good to get inside of engine parts. For my tests I used 10 tablespoonfuls (heaping) of drano to 1 quart of water. This mixture dissolved a pop can in less than an hour, and clean aluminum would dissolve even quicker. 08/27/05 - Lunar plots - setting up a moon base (Chicken before the egg for sure - JWD) If money were no object, what would it take to build a moon base fit for human habitation? Air, water and electricity are the key requirements of any habitation. Because it would be prohibitively expensive to ship out supplies, these would need to be produced on the Moon itself. For the raw materials are in plentiful - if not easily extractable - supply. Current indications are the need for a good supply of ilmenite, a mineral from which to extract oxygen, hydrogen and helium. As well as producing air and water, the flammable gases could be burned to generate electricity. "It would be not too difficult to make bricks and mortar from lunar rocks, and ilmenite would provide a nice supply of titanium, a light strong metal, and iron." 08/27/05 - Sullos electrically driven turbine for propulsion effect (Recieved this link from Mr. Sullos and found it quite fascinating - JWD) Three new phenomena can be observed: 1)The rule of Lenz was inverted. 2) A still electrical charge moved by a still magnetic field. 3) Failure of the action-reaction principle. At least, this appears to be the case! This experiment is the key to achieve the electric control of gravity. This device is a turbine that removes energy from the kinetic energy of planet Earth because when it is working it applies a force on the axis in exactly the opposed direction to the planet's absolute moving direction in the space. In other words, it brakes to the planet. It can be named as "Geo-kinetic Turbine". It does not need any fuel. The performance is very good; it can give more than 1 KW by each Kg of the equipment. It releases no pollution, no noise; it needs no fuel. The maintenance is cheap. It is an ideal generating set. 08/27/05 - China creates Moon Central (Ominous rumblings about Chinas economic and energy initiatives, now space...time to close down clunky, misguided, badly run, spendthrift NASA and privatize our efforts if we want to be players in the space game! - JWD) The center, opened on Monday, would oversee the launch of a moon orbiter in 2007, a lunar lander in 2012 and a third satellite designed to reach the moon and bring back soil samples for research in 2017, the newspaper said. "The center has also recruited a galaxy of promising and enterprising scientists to work on the lunar missions," it said. It became the third country to send a man into space in October 2003 and regularly puts research satellites in orbit. The lunar orbiter scheduled for 2007 would have a one-year mission of mapping the moon's surface and studying its mineral content, the head of the program has said. 08/27/05 - Adventures of Everett True (If you have a few minutes and enjoy excellent cartoon 'humor', check out these images from a lost 1906-7 cartoon strip. It shows the same obnoxious behavior happened then as now from rude people...quite charming and I love this kind of drawing and clear statement of purpose. - JWD) Everett is no sociopath. He's not just running around taking umbrage at petty offenders and then sockin' 'em in the puss. Through the course of the series, he exhibits a very strong ethos that runs through his actions. He stands for decorum and sturdy bedrock values, but he's no reactionary. He's as likely to thrash a cop or a preacher as a blowhard or braggart. And woe betide the man whom Everett True catches mistreating animals or ogling ladies' ankles on a windy day! 08/26/05 - Radus magnetic boots a key to free energy? (This is apparently what Floyd Sweet did in his Vacuum Triode Amplifier which programmed a 'bubble' into a magnet which could be tickled to rapidly change polarity and induce current flow - JWD) With the Radus boots, the astronaut could pick up his foot by simply switching off the permanent magnetic fields easily. They switched on again when he placed the foot down. And he did not have to carry a huge battery around with him, to furnish enormous current to do that. The magnetic fields themselves - from permanent magnets - were simply switched! And the magnets had a memory. (So far as is known, even today no one tells you that in many virgin magnets fresh from the factory, their very first use conditions them with a memory!) That fact can be used, e.g., to create magnets whose fields appear normal, but which deviate from the normal behavior of ordinary magnets, including produce anomalies in their magnetic fields. With a little ingenuity in switching one could use such switchable magnets to produce a self-switching, self-powered permanent magnet motor. If you can easily switch the fields of a permanent magnet as you wish, and make that magnet also have a memory that you deliberately conditioned into it, you could also build a permanent magnet self-powered engine by adapting such memory (asymmetrical behavior) and switching. 08/26/05 - Fence sitting about Hybrids by US car manufacturers Toyota's bold prediction that it would sell 600,000 hybrid vehicles annually in the U.S. by early next decade has been met with a collective "We'll see how it goes" from the rest of the industry. In a forum on future engines at an industry conference here Friday, the Big Three domestic automakers and Honda took the road of caution. What does Toyota see that the others don't? For one, it has received a public edict from the top. Toyota Motor Corp. President Katsuaki Watanabe recently set a goal of selling 1 million hybrids globally by early next decade, with 600,000 expected to be sold in the U.S., its largest market. The reason? Cost, says Anthony Pratt, J.D. Power's senior manager of global powertrain research. Power says the gas/electrics cost more, about $2,300 to $11,000 more than gasoline-powered cars. Moreover, the Big 3 and Honda are exploring more efficient gas engines, diesels and even natural gas vehicles that will be alternatives by then. 08/26/05 - The Automobile Lobby and its suppression of Mass Transit (My late friend Howard Bond, an afficionado of electric trolleys, used to tell how oil and car companies did everything they could to destroy trolleys and rail to force people to use cars, meaning gasoline and road systems, this article correlates with that premise. - JWD) Los Angeles once had a vast rail system, the nation’s largest. In the peak years in the 1920s and early 1930s, the Pacific Electric’s interurban network fanning out from the downtown hub carried millions of passengers and encompassed 1,000 miles of track and 700 route miles of service. Even before Mayor Fletcher Brown took office in 1938, automobile, gasoline and tire companies formed a consortium to begin converting existing electric trolleys and street cars to motorized buses. By the mid-1950s, the “Big Red” cars were history. Local politicians and state highway engineers for decades failed to foresee the importance of adding light-rail lines along freeway strips to ease today’s gridlock. It was a classic example of bureaucratic nearsightedness - the automobile friendly lobby still ruled. 08/26/05 - Hyundai Motors Click Hybrid Hybrids use engines powered by both gasoline and electricity. They produce less emission, but boast better fuel efficiency than gasoline vehicles. Hybrids were initially designed to bridge the gap between gasoline-powered cars and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, which are considered free of emissions. Last year, Hyundai Motor provided 50 hybrid versions of Click mini-cars to the government for testing. The carmaker plans to begin the sale of hybrids in late 2006, but the ministry wants the date to be moved up. The Click hybrids have been used by police and government agencies and so far few problems have been reported, the official said. The hybrids run 18 kilometers per liter, featuring about 50 percent better fuel economy than gasoline-powered cars. 08/26/05 - Explosion proof lithium-ion battery Lithium ion batteries are so potent that they've become ubiquitous in laptops and cell phones, but the cobalt oxide used to generate such prodigious amounts of electricity per gram is highly volatile. That's prevented larger-scale uses -- in cars, for example -- because the risk of a deadly explosion has simply been too great. Lithium ion batteries are more energy-dense than nickel metal hydride cells currently used in most hybrid and electric cars. That means a lithium ion battery can run at a higher power for a longer time than a nickel metal battery of the same weight. But most lithium cells use a cobalt oxide chemistry that can catch fire or explode if the battery is charged or discharged too quickly, or if it is physically damaged. 08/26/05 - Choosing your fuel When you're pumping gas, you'll normally see three grades of gas to choose from -- 87 octane, 89 octane and 93 octane. The lower the octane number, the easier that fuel is to burn. And the higher the octane level, the harder that fuel is to burn. As an engine gets a little older, it might require a higher octane because the compression ratios would change with carbon deposits. If this is the case, a service technician will tell you to use a higher grade of gas. The only other alternative would be to disassemble the engine and take the carbon out. 08/26/05 - Ganging up to compete for Space Russia, Europe, and Japan may jointly develop a crewed spacecraft called Kliper to ferry as many as six astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The spacecraft could launch as early as 2010 - just as NASA retires its space shuttles. The craft carries three people and can stay docked to the International Space Station for just six months, but the Kliper may transport twice as many and could stay in orbit for up to a year. Its design is still being worked out, but it may have "stubby" wings to allow it to steer and land on a runway, like the shuttle. But unlike the shuttle, which can loft heavy cargo into space, the Kliper would mainly act as a "people carrier", says Thirkettle. 08/26/05 - Change driving habits to save fuel Instead of stomping on the pedal when the light turns green, start out more gently, and accelerate only until you reach the speed limit. Then, when you see the next light changing, ease back. Don't waste fuel pushing ahead to an inevitable stop. If the light is not too far away, ease back entirely and coast to a stop. Vehicles speeding, passing and pushing to get ahead, only to end up stopped at a red light. When the light changes to green, all the vehicles charged ahead. It did not matter what kind of vehicle. Cars, minivans, SUVs, trucks and buses, all made lots of noise and kicked out unburned hydrocarbons from their exhaust pipes. The last part of that sentence is the key: Unburned hydrocarbons means wasted fuel. Pushing down too hard on an accelerator means trying to move too much fuel too rapidly through the combustion system. Unignited fuel components get kicked back out and into the air. How much could this save you? Maybe as much as 10 percent. That would mean a $3.50 savings per tankful in a car or minivan, and maybe $5 for an SUV or heavy-duty pickup truck -- and that assumes you use regular-grade gasoline. That's between a gallon and a half and two gallons per tankful, enough to go another 30 miles or so. 08/26/05 - Teen invents hamster wheel phone charger Peter Ash, of Lawford, Somerset, attached a generator to his hamster's exercise wheel and connected it to his phone charger. Elvis does the legwork while Peter charges his phone in an economically and environmentally friendly way. He came up with the idea after his sister Sarah complained that Elvis was keeping her awake at night by playing for hours on his exercise wheel. "I thought the wheel could be made to do something useful so I connected a system of gears and a turbine," he said. "Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about thirty minutes talk time on my phone." 08/26/05 - Preventable medical errors People may fear dying in a highway crash -- nearly 43,000 deaths each year in the United States -- or dying of breast cancer -- about 40,000 a year -- but studies indicate many more perish from preventable medical errors. A few years ago the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine estimated that up to 98,000 people a year die from medical errors. "Most medical errors are not committed by people, but by systems -- systems that break down," said Philip Dunn. Still, there appears to be very little public outrage over the situation -- certainly not the kind that would emerge against the airline industry if it exhibited a comparable fatality rate, which would result in the crashing of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet nearly every day. 08/25/05 - Re-Growing your own teeth "In theory, a natural tooth made from the patient's own tissue and grown in its intended location would make the best possible replacement, although such bio-engineered teeth have for many years been little more than a dream. Scientists have derived a technology by which teeth can be grown in a test-tube and then be implanted into the user's jaw. "Current standards of care involve replacement of missing teeth using titanium implants, which function almost exactly like natural teeth. However, unlike living teeth, they are fixed within the jaws and do not respond to a person's bite. "A living tooth is thus able to preserve the health of the surrounding tissues much better than an artificial implant." 08/25/05 - 50/50 Ethanol/Gas blend on sale Defenbaugh said using a half-and-half blend of gasoline and ethanol has apparently made no difference in the functioning of his three vehicles - a Chevy and two Fords. I know farmers that have E85 tanks on the farm and are blending it 50-50 with gasoline and putting that in their tractors, and pickups, and cars. "We only recommend a maximum of 10 percent ethanol in gasoline-only powered vehicles," Kautz said. "We don't recommend blending 50-50 for liability reasons, and also because auto manufacturers don't recommend that, it would void any warranty, and may cause problems with the vehicle." The primary difference in a Flexible Fuel Vehicle compared to a regular gasoline-only model is the fuel sensor that detects the ethanol/gasoline ratio. A number of other parts on the FFV's fuel delivery system are modified to ethanol-compatible. The fuel tank, fuel lines, fuel injectors, computer system, and anti-sifon device have been modified slightly. Alcohol fuels can be more corrosive than gasoline; therefore; fuel system parts have been upgraded to be ethanol compatible. 08/25/05 - How to tell if you have a Flex-Fuel car National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, promoting 105 Octane E85 Ethanol as an environmentally sound fuel. E85 is the term for motor fuel blends of 85 percent ethanol and just 15 percent gasoline. E85 is an alternative fuel as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy. Besides its superior performance characteristics, ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline; it is a completely renewable, domestic, environmentally friendly fuel that enhances the nation's economy and energy independence. The Flexible-Fuel Vehicle system allows the driver to use any combination of gasoline or ethanol - from 100 percent unleaded gasoline to 85 percent ethanol. A driver can therefore use unleaded gasoline if E85 is not available. Daimler Chrysler / Ford / General Motors / Isuzu / Mazda / Mercedes / Mercury / Nissan 08/25/05 - 90% of Phillipine power is from Alternative Energy sources The Philippines is now nearly self-sufficient in the power generation sector with about 90 per cent of the country's electricity supply coming from alternative sources of energy such as geothermal, hydroelectric and natural gas. This means that only 10 per cent of the country's electricity supply is dependent from imported oil. The Philippines is now generating l,909 meagawatts from geothermal energy making it the world's number two producer, next only to the United States. The Palinpinon geothermal power plant generates 192 MW. An additional 20 MW would be generated upon the commissioning in 2007 of the Palinpinon II geothermal extension project in nearby Valencia town. The project is the fourth largest geothermal plant in the country in installed capacity next to the 708-MW geothermal plant in Leyte, the 425.7-MW Mak-Ban plant in Laguna, and the 330-MW Tiwi plant in Albay. 08/25/05 - Hot water from solar panels (See earlier report here about new, lightweight panels, about $300 each - JWD) On the roof of the Hackneys’ new home in West Tisbury are two panels that heat water as it flows through solar collectors. The hot water is sent to a storage tank and then used for the dishwasher, laundry machine, sinks, baths, indoor and outdoor showers, and even a Jacuzzi. Once the system pays for itself in the next few years, it’s all free. Once Larry Schaeffer found the right manufacturer and installation support, the solar heating system for his pool was up in one day and has nearly paid for itself in four months. The Adler family’s pool is heated 100 percent by solar collectors that have paid for themselves within months. The materials, which he ordered from Solar Innovations in Florida, cost approximately $3,500. Up to that point, the Adlers had been paying so much in propane to keep the pool warm, they had stopped heating it. That was when everyone stopped using it. What most pool owners report is that if the pool isn’t heated, its ambient temperature is too cool and people don’t use it. The Adlers had been heating it for special events and then turning the heaters off. “Before I turned it off, I was paying up to $6,000 sometimes between May and October." 08/25/05 - Magnetic flames (Shades of Baron Reichenbach in The OD Force, whose 'sensitives' reported seeing magnetic flames - JWD) Magnetic avalanches occur when the polarity of a molecular nanomagnet is changed suddenly and sufficient energy is released to cause a chain reaction that changes the polarity of the other molecular nanomagnets in a crystal. “Molecular nanomagnets are the first-known magnetic materials in which the magnetic energy density is sufficient to ignite a ‘magnetic flame,’” said Dr. Myriam P. Sarachik, Distinguished Professor of Physics at CCNY. Unlike chemical burning, magnetic burning is non-destructive, reversible and more readily controlled. Chudnovsky and Garanin had theorized that under the right circumstances a magnetic system could be made to emit laser type radiation. They suggested that a magnetic avalanche might initiate such laser action. Measuring the speed of the avalanche would aid in the examination of the theory. When experimentalists at CCNY discovered that the avalanche propagates at a constant speed of a few meters per second, Professor Chudnovsky proposed that the effect is, in fact, “magnetic burning”. Comparison between theory and experiment confirmed his conjecture. 08/25/05 - Triazole for improved polymer fuel cells Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have pinpointed a chemical that could allow PEM fuel cells to operate at a much higher temperature without moisture, potentially meaning that polymer fuel cells could be made much more cheaply than ever before and finally run at temperatures high enough to make them practical for use in cars and small electronics. A fuel cell essentially produces electricity by converting the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water. To do this, the fuel cell needs a proton exchange membrane, a specially treated material that looks a lot like plastic wrap, to conduct protons (positively charged ions) but block electrons. This membrane is the key to building a better fuel cell. The use of triazole also solves one of the most persistent problems of fuel cells - heat. Ceramic fuel cells currently on the market run at a very high temperature (about 800 degrees Celsius) and are too hot for most portable applications such as small electronics. Liu’s team has been able to increase their PEM fuel cell operating temperatures to above 120 degrees Celsius, eliminating the need for a water management system and dramatically simplifying the cooling system. “We’re using the triazole to replace water,” Liu said. “By doing so, we can bring up the temperature significantly.” 08/25/05 - Sandia new Dielectrophoresis device The new tool developed at Sandia selectively - and very quickly - concentrates live pathogenic bacteria within large water samples. “Medical diagnostics applications might include enabling detection of diseases that produce anomalous cell morphology, such as cancer, sickle cell anemia, and leukemia,” said Carrie Burchard, a business development manager at Sandia. “In laboratories, iDEP could contribute to differential sorting of live and dead cells in cell culturing, and allow for protein isolation and concentration, sample concentration and focusing, analytical chemistry, and mass spectrometry for proteomics and drug discovery,” she said. First reported by Pohl in 1951, dielectrophoresis is the movement of particles toward concentrated electric fields. The magnitude and direction of this motion depends on the size and shape of the particle as well as on the difference in conductivity between the particle and the suspending fluid. Thus, cell types can be sorted dielectrophoretically on the basis of shape and size, and dead cells separated from live on the basis of their higher conductivity. 08/25/05 - Chicks locate themselves magnetically While researchers have long known that migratory birds use the Earth's magnetic field to choose their flight path, this is the first time scientists have seen this orientation behaviour in birds that don't migrate. "When we shifted the direction of the magnetic compass by turning on electrical coils we had placed around the cage, we found the chickens could still follow the ball." The chickens simply took the long way round, still orientating themselves magnetically, but taking longer to find the balls. Rogers says migratory birds that have to go long distances use many different cues such as stars, the Sun and the Earth's magnetic field to find their way. 08/24/05 - Alcohol powered truck The "conversion" wasn't at all difficult, either. In fact, it can be done (in less than two hours!) on just about any vehicle manufactured today ... and with tools you'd find in most anyone's workshop. In order to use alcohol fuel in an engine designed to burn gasoline, it's necessary to enlarge the opening in the carburetor's main jet (or jets, if your carb is a multithroat model). If you choose, you might want to rig up a dual-fuel system. This will allow the use of either alcohol or gasoline (with a bit of tinkering involved in the switch-over process) and entails only the installation of a second fuel tank and some additional plumbing. Mother's pickup is still going strong after over 5,000 miles. It starts easily in the morning and runs well when it reaches operating temperature (we've found that a manual choke aids in the "warming up" process). Fuel economy isn't quite as good in the alcohol mode, but it's close to normal... and power and acceleration are unaffected. 08/24/05 - Natural gas/gasoline hybrid U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Heath, and State Sen. Joy Padgett, R-Coshocton, watched a man refuel his gas tank to the tune of $1.39 a gallon. Down the street, gas prices were $2.49. And though the driver used a fueld similar to gasoline, it wasn't the kind you'll pump from the stations on Second Street. He was using natural gas. At Compressed Natural Gas Powered Vehicles Auto Sales - CNG for short - drivers need a vehicle with a specialized tank to fill up on the cleaner, cheaper fuel. The company sells vehicles equipped to run on natural gas. Some run only on natural gas, while others have two tanks, one for motor gasoline and another for natural gas. When one fuel supply runs out, the other takes over. King has sold about 150 natural gas cars since starting his company five years ago. He's only changed gas prices six times in that period. 08/24/05 - Is E85 the fuel of the future? Purdue is already deep into bio-fuel research, specifically using agricultural waste to make ethanol. "Rather than talking about corn grain, we used cobs, leaves and stalks to make into ethanol, which is where my research is focused." President Bush's just-signed energy bill includes a mandate for bio-based fuels like E-85, soon expanding to five service stations across the state. Cheaper than gas, it's a blend of 85 percent ethanol, an alternative fuel made from Indiana corn. With nearly 90 ethanol plants across the nation and 15 under construction, the US will soon produce almost five billion gallons of ethanol. Purdue's research, hoping to finally wean America off oil, is working with Detroit automakers over what will eventually power the next generation of automobiles. Purdue will work on bringing bio-fuels and clean coal technology to market while making them affordable, expanding to solar and wind power. 08/24/05 - Animal fat to power cars Chicken fat contains hydrocarbons just like petroleum oil, and can be converted into fuel for a car. The idea of using chicken fat for fuel is catching on. One school district in Florida is using a combination of chicken fat and diesel fuel to power its school buses. But chickens are not the only animals that can power cars -- turkeys and pigs can too. So can soybean oil. And a Missouri company is turning turkey parts into heating oil. Some people are using pure vegetable oil to fuel their diesel cars. But vegetable oil costs more than diesel fuel, about $3.50 a gallon. So some are using waste vegetable oil from restaurants, which they can usually get for free. A word of caution, though -- vegetable oil cannot be used in a gasoline engine. It only works in cars and trucks that run on diesel fuel. 08/24/05 - The Funny side of the fuel crisis "There are other ways to save gas, you know - I'm always pretending to break down, just so people will tow me places," said Tom Stern, a comedian and comic strip artist. "Officials are now backing off a statement that terrorists were planning to use fuel trucks for attacks in major cities," he said, opening a show earlier this week. "Apparently what happened is fuel prices are so high, the terrorists can't afford it." The Onion has leaped into the act. A recent headline from the satiric newspaper declared that President Bush had vowed to end America's dependence on foreign oil by 4920, while it reported that scientists are researching "whateverthanol," an alternative fuel made by mixing random liquids. 08/24/05 - Are BioFuels just snake oil? As gasoline nudges toward $3 per gallon, the biofuel buzz is becoming deafening. Also known as gasohol and biodiesel, these "renewable" energy sources have turned many heads lately. Farmers see an unlimited market for corn-based ethanol and soybean-based biodiesel. However, policymakers have repeatedly said that the country's crop base could not sustain the anticipated demand for ethanol. With today's appetite for gasoline, ethanol production will need to double to 8 billion gallons per year just to meet the 10 percent mandate included in the Energy Bill. Despite such impressive statistics, biofuels will ultimately betray, not benefit small farmers. A sudden demand for ethanol and biodiesel would quickly drive prices of desirable crop land out of reach of most farmers and force others to plow marginal land. These huge "fuel farms" would require expensive machinery and vast quantities of water, fertilizer and pesticides. Biofuels also are not cheap. Recent research, including an independent study from Cornell University, shows that they require more energy to produce than they give out, with sunflower-based fuels topping out at 118 percent more. Since we cannot replace food production, we must find new and more expensive acreage - fast. Are we to believe producers will not pass these costs on at the pump? 08/24/05 - Compressed Natural Gas as a fuel WITH oil prices going through the roof and nations across the globe having to deal with the problem of global warming, alternative fuels like compressed natural gas (CNG) are becoming a viable alternative to gasoline and diesel. CNG did not receive as much attention as other alternative fuel. Although natural gas (85 to 99 percent methane) is fossil fuel, it is comparably clean burning, cheap and abundant in many parts of the world. “Because natural gas is mostly methane, natural gas vehicles...will produce much lower nitrous oxide, sulphur oxides and particulate matter emissions,” said Chua. He said use of CNG buses will result in lower transport fares as CNG is cheaper than diesel. “The use of CNG as a vehicle fuel in the country is one of the most logical steps to take in reducing dependence on imported oil. At present, the transport sector consumes about 53 percent of the total imported oil requirements,” Chua said. 08/24/05 - Windmill powered school saves $100,000 per year Near Bureau Valley High School, a wind turbine stands 30 stories high, its three 76-foot blades tracing lazy circles on the blue Midwestern sky. Running since January, the $1.1 million turbine is the first in the state to power a high school and is projected to save the school $100,000 in annual electricity costs. Today, the turbine's computerized generator makes up to four revolutions to find the 6-7 m.p.h. breeze it needs from any direction to produce more energy than it consumes. Once found, it runs at a steady 28.5 revolutions per minute. On the rare occasion the wind is too light, the turbine shuts itself down to save energy and prevent unnecessary wear on its parts, thereby extending its estimated life expectancy of 20 to 30 years. 08/24/05 - Lowering surface tension (I found this intriguing because its fairly simple and might have other apps than just laundry - JWD) A novel mix of common detergent ingredients that lowers the surface tension in liquids could force extra water from clothes during the final spin cycle, the researchers found. Dinesh Shah, director of the Center for Surface Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, and Ph.D. student Daniel Carter noticed that cloth fibers act like tiny capillaries, stubbornly holding onto water through the spin cycle. By lowering the surface tension -- the force that keeps water in a straw when one end is closed with a finger -- water drained more easily from these fiber capillaries. The researchers found they could lower surface tension by mixing common surfactants in a new way -- five parts lauryl sulfate to one part dioctyldecyldimethyl ammonium bromide. "We call it dodab," Carter said. Clothes dryers accounted for 5.8 percent of U.S. residential electricity in 2001, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration, costing $5.6 billion. "If you could cut that down by 10 percent, that would have a important impact on the big picture," said Jonathan Cogan, an EIA spokesman. Carter says they can do even better: "I believe that with further research, we could cut drying times by between 30 and 40 percent." 08/24/05 - More on the Kinetic Energy Cell, electricity from vibration The KEC is an electrical device with a series of very small coils in it and also some magnets. Interestingly in a world where the focus is now going to things like nanotechnology we’ve created some of the world’s most powerful nano-magnets and you can now put those into a polymer to a point where you can actually mould or cast magnets to whatever size and shape you now like. We actually tailor the design to particular frequencies and Jan just before mentioned about a car going down a freeway or a vehicle going down a freeway and when you actually do the analysis of that car’s vibration and movement, you actually tailor the design to that band of, say, frequencies and it’s a little bit like when you walk - the motion of walking or swinging a lady’s handbag is a very, very low frequency and we actually tailor the design to those frequency ranges. The energy produced is actually fairly small as you could appreciate because you are only harvesting sort of very small amounts of motion, but the idea is that it charges what’s called a super capacitor, so the capacitor itself in essence becomes a storage battery. 08/23/05 - Queen converts Buckingham Palace to geothermal heating/cooling The Buckingham Palace system will provide a secure, free and inexhaustible energy supply from beneath the surface of the 1.6ha (3.95 acres) lake at the heart of the walled gardens. It will pump heating to the state rooms, the formal area of the palace. Water containing a refrigerant chemical is circulated through a loop of pipework running through the lake bed and into the groundwater feeding it. The slow journey through the coils allows the liquid to absorb the surrounding heat at a constant 12C (53.6 degree Fahrenheit). The Queen ordered a small trial in 2002 that drilled 122m into the chalk aquifer beneath the palace grounds to run an eco-friendly airconditioning system for a new art gallery, built at Buckingham Palace to mark her golden jubilee. The results were apparently so impressive that she is ready to take the bold step of using a new underground heating system to replace conventional sources for part of the palace. 08/23/05 - Electricity captured from vibrations A renewable energy device that captures vibration to produce electricity looks set to replace or complement small conventional batteries for a range of every day applications and enable the reliable powering of new technologies. The Kinetic Energy Cell is a micro renewable energy source able to generate electricity from vibration or motion such as from cars, trucks and even people. This means that so long as there is access to movement or vibration the cell produces energy. Because the cell can replace standard and alkaline batteries in some applications, it is a non-polluting solution to small power requirements. The Australian invention is designed to work where intermittent or on and off power supply is required and vibration or motion exists, such as in a car, truck, or ship. While the latest design unit is small-scale (the size of a 9 volt battery), plans to reduce its size and develop the Kinetic Energy Cell for wider market applications are underway. The technology, developed by the Melbourne-based CRC for microTechnology, consists of only seven components and includes exciting innovation in coil construction. The technology can also be easily "tuned" to optimise operation in a wide range of vibration environments, opening up many potential future applications. 08/23/05 - Solar Powered Scooter Donald Dunklee has been watching the power grid slowly but surely failing, while the world demand for fossil fuel is slowly overpowering the world supply, driving prices skyward. It made him determined to "get off the drip" and build street-legal, affordable, dependable, sun-charged transport for his daily 5 mile commute. His solar powered motorcycle has not been plugged into the factory charger since April 15, 2005 and it’s now travelled over 700 miles since then. The basic bike is a stock EVT 4000E available from various dealers around the U.S. The rest of the system consists of a Xantrex (formerly Trace) C-40 charge controller, and 4 Atlantic Solar 30 watt, 16 X 25 inch panels mounted two to a side. The panels fold open while in charging mode and are closed while driving. Mounting hardware is basic off the shelf parts available from any hardware store. The design criteria was simple. The bike needed to be able to be self contained, that is all charging from the sun, but still allow the factory charger to be used if needed. 08/23/05 - Corn based biofuels run well in many existing engines Drivers around the country are being introduced to E85. It is an ethanol based fuel that could be the answer to the gas crisis. Nevada recently got its first E85 fueling site. Dave Dufort just found out that his minivan can run on ethanol. About 10,000 cars in Las Vegas can already run on E85, a blend of grain alcohol and gasoline. The bad news for Dave is that he has already filled up with gas. Instead of paying $2.48 cents for gas, he could have only paid $1.99 for E85. Not every car runs on a can of corn, but it is easy to find out if your does. There might be a sticker right by your gas cap. If you don`t see the sticker, you can check your vehicle identification number. Auto manufacturers put in a code at the 2nd, 3rd, and 8th digit that lets you know if your car is a flexible fuel vehicle. You can cross reference those numbers on the E85 fuel website. One of the things you should know about E85 is that you won`t get better fuel economy than unleaded gas. Depending on your car, your miles per gallon should stay the same or even drop as low as 18 percent. 08/23/05 - The ultimate alternative energy source According to some scientists, a window could be opened, compressing demagnetized and de-electrified matter at 0ºK by means of a hydrogen bomb (an atomic bomb that compresses matter). The resulting hyperdense matter could be stabilized. That will provide a miniscule window to the hyperspace if five dimension. The radiation energy can be tapped from the hyperspace. This radiation energy is cheap and the source is endless. And, the window can be opened anywhere ay any time. We are talking about virtually free endless source of intense energy. Technologists are looking at the possibilities of extracting the radiation energy from the hyperspace and utilize the same to generate electricity. That electricity can be used to break water into Hydrogen and oxygen. Then Hydrogen can be burnt in oxygen to produce enormous energy for driving cars, flying planes and so on. One little note - fossil fuels like gasoline burn in oxygen. Hydrogen explodes in oxygen. The Hydrogen explosion needs to be controlled with water spraying and so on. Hydrogen produces much more energy then equivalent hydrocarbon. And the resulting water is totally pollution free. 08/23/05 - Gravity powered aircraft needs no fuel Former nuclear designer, Robert D. Hunt of Hunt Aviation Corp has come up with a new "gravity powered aircraft technology" that he claims can accomplish sustained fuel-less flight. Hunt has designed a new hybrid aircraft: a "gravity-powered aircraft" which is a fixed wing, ridged skin airplane made of lightweight and modern composite materials. The "Gravity-Plane", as Hunt Aviation likes to call it, uses gravity's dual properties - buoyancy which creates an upward motion in order to gain altitude, and gravity acceleration which creates a forward and downward gliding motion. The two motions combined form the heart of Hunt's new gravity powered technology, a technology that could make for a much healthier and cleaner environment. "Hunt's invention is the first practical use of gravity to provide a motive force by forming a continuous cycle out of two forces of gravity with the result being, for the first time ever, self-sustained fuel-less flight and this is a tremendous and historic accomplishment", stated Gene Cox, President of Hunt Aviation Corp. 08/23/05 - Alternative Fuels a risky investment You may not be ready to switch auto fuel, but rising oil prices may have gotten you wondering: Isn't there some better alternative energy source to oil? And is there some way to invest in it? Maybe. But right now, the best way to invest in energy is probably through old-fashioned energy companies. As easy as it is to find losers from the run-up in energy prices, it's harder to find winners. Many alternative fuels and technologies are in the very early stages of development. Companies involved in alternative energy are often speculative, to say the least. "They're just burning through cash every quarter, and venture capitalists aren't seeing a return on capital," says Tony Tursich, co-manager of Portfolio 21. But if you're looking for alternatives, you might be better off with more traditional companies. FPL Group (FPL), for example, is one of the biggest producers of wind power in the nation. BP has big investments in solar and wind power, although they're a small part of the company's business. 08/23/05 - Hydrogen powered aircraft Research by the UK’s Cranfield University has concluded that fuel cells are still far too heavy for propulsion. A large aircraft requires many megawatts, generated from at least two turbine engines weighing around 3,900kg (8,600lb) each. The Cranfield study found that today’s best fuel cells would generate 670-1,000kW on average and would weigh over 3,200kg each. Another major challenge is the electrically driven fans that would be powered by the cells. The fan’s electric motors that would be supplied with electricity by the fuel cell are also still far too large and heavy. The motor’s copper coils are a big problem for this weight obstacle. A major question for automotive studies has been whether the user generates hydrogen on board or obtains it at a hydrogen refinery. The question is equally applicable to aviation. NASA is focusing on liquid-hydrogen power as part of its Vehicle Systems programme. This is aimed at breakthrough technologies, including a zero-emissions demonstrator that is a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell aircraft with cryogenic electric motors embedded in the wing (Flight International, 15-22 February). 08/23/05 - BioOil portable plant The new project will see a portable, self-contained bio-refinery prototype going to areas where unused forest biomass (branches and twigs) are piled up waiting to rot. The idea is to convert those branches and twigs into usable bio-oil. The dry distillation bio-refinery uses stainless steel balls that are super-heated so that when wood waste is dumped on them, it's quickly converted into charcoal, gas and bio-oil said Dr. Tom Noland. "A single bio-refinery can process up to 50 tonnes of forest biomass every day," said Dr. David DeYoe in a Ministry of Natural Resources media release. "A sustainable supply of unused forest waste or biomass is available in Ontario's forests, such as tree tops, limbs and waste left after logging operations; trees destroyed by fire, insects and disease; and logs that cannot be sold," said the release. Bio-oil produced in Advanced BioRefinery Inc.'s transportable refinery could be used to produce heat and electricity. Or, it could make value-added bio-products such as plastics and glue, said Orazietti at today's announcement. 08/23/05 - 200 Watt portable Fuel Cell for sale now The VE100 v3 weighs just nine kilograms and delivers the equivalent to the power produced from a plug in the wall - the European version produces EU standard 230 volts at 50Hz, while the US version produces 110 volts at 60Hz. No toxic emissions are produced while the unit is operating, the only output being pure water. The VE100 v3 portable fuel cell system is capable of delivering up to 200 watts at peak power and the unit is completely self contained and importantly does not require an external battery to start the system. The VE100 v3 is quiet and produces AC mains electricity and simultaneously runs 12v DC electrical appliances that are designed to fit into a car lighter socket. The VE100 v3 now also boasts a new LCD display that shows the quantity of hydrogen remaining in the canister and enables the user to program the fuel cell to be operational in a number of different modes. 08/22/05 - Invention to run water in a car via ZPENERGY.COM Denny Klein uses an alternative fuel source once thought impossible. He says people still can't believe him when he reveals his liquid fuel. "water. Water and electricity; it's an electrolysis process." Klein just patented his process of converting h20 to hho, producing a gas that combines the atomic power of hydrogen with the chemical stability of water. "it turns right back to water. In fact, you can see the h20 running off the sheet metal." Klein originally designed his water-burning engine for cutting metal. He thought his invention could replace acetylene in welding factories. Then one day as he drove to his laboratory in Clearwater, he thought of another way to burn his hho gas. "on a 100 mile trip, we use about four ounces of water." Klein says his prototype 1994 Ford Escort can travel exclusively on water, though he currently has it rigged to run as a water and gasoline hybrid. Members of Congress recently invited Denny Klein to Washington to demonstrate his technology. Now his company is currently developing a Hummer for the US military that can run on both water and gasoline. So far, his water-powered engines have passed all performance safety inspections. more at http://hytechapps.com/....(With some hunting I found the patent as issued March 15, 2005, at 6,866,756 Inventors: Klein; Dennis - 66 Pelican Pl., Belleair, FL 33756 - JWD) 08/22/05 - BioDiesel Alternative for 46 cents per gallon (Note, this is a claim, ONLY works on Diesel and you have to buy their manual and the 'unique additive' at $12.99 per bottle to make up to 152 gallons of your own fuel! - JWD) Diesel Secret Energy, LLC (DSE) has developed a simple method for creating a very useable alternative diesel fuel from vegetable oil that doesn't require converting one's vehicle or the use of harsh chemicals associated with making Bio-diesel. The cost per gallon to users is a staggering 46 cents per gallon! For only $39.95, the buyer receives a manual and video describing how the user can make their own homemade "fuel station" in a few hours plus a bottle of their unique additive. Then, they simply mix the oil they have obtained (usually free) with the recommended ingredients and DSE's own specially made additive and voila', a cleaner burning, and much cheaper fuel. www.dieselsecret.com 08/22/05 - Got Ethanol? Have you noticed that convenience stores all of a sudden aren’t selling gasoline that contains ethanol? Most stations are selling an ethanol blend of gasoline these days but they no longer have to tell you. A law that quietly went into effect July 1 does away with a decades-old requirement that retailers inform their customers if fuel contains ethanol. Labeling is now optional. Ethanol promoters say the labeling law was simply a reaction to an unfounded fear of ethanol, one that stems from 1970s era blends that performed poorly and may even have harmed engines. But some consumers do want to know if they are buying E10 - a fuel blend that is 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, what used to be known as gasohol. For one thing, E10 gives you less bang for your buck. (Literally. Gasoline has about one and a half times the energy content of ethanol.) That means your car won’t go as far on a tank of E10 as it will on straight unleaded. Ethanol promoters insist you won’t notice. 08/22/05 - No interest in Wave Energy invention Lucien Gamborota has worked in his home lab for 15 years, inventing devices of every shape and function, including a candy that lights up when you chew it. Now he claims he has developed a process that can solve the world energy crisis by harnessing the hidden power of ocean waves. Gamborota's device uses wave action to crank a uni-directional gear, like a bike pedal, generating the power. ``A 10 centimeter wave can send a jet of water twenty meters into the air,'' he says, explaining how the force could generate electricity in water-driven turbines. University of Hong Kong mechanical engineering researcher Dennis Leung showed The Standard a prototype of Gamborota's device, in which a thin metal tube connects small PVC buoys, one pair per segment, to a string of cable that would transfer power to land. The equation is simple: mass of water movement increased by number of segments and height of waves equals energy. And lots of it, potentially. But Gamborota, who has called Hong Kong home for over 20 years, says nobody is showing any interest in his invention. 08/22/05 - Fuel Saving Rickshaws invade London streets The Cycle Rickshaw model that is still in use in many Indian cities has its counterpart in London, where it is seen as an eco-friendly alternative to motor taxis. Since 1998, half a dozen companies with names such as Bugbugs, London Pedicabs and Chariot Bikes have been leasing out cycle rickshaws to drivers in the U.K. capital, who pay around £100 (Rs. 8,000) a week and get to keep all fares and tips they collect. Today, there are over 200 cycle rickshaws plying in the central district of London ferrying mostly tourists over short distances. The rickshaws are mostly driven by students or those looking to make some quick money with a week's work and typically charge £2 (Rs. 160) a person for a distance under 2 km. 08/22/05 - Window films to save on heating/cooling costs People think of installing permanent window film to block the summer heat, but some types are effective during the winter, too. These year-round window films have a low-e (emissivity) coating similar to efficient replacement windows, so they keep the heat indoors during the winter. When the sun's rays hit the window film, some is reflected away. Some of the light is converted to heat as the film absorbs it. The rest of the light and heat pass through into your home. The darker films you saw tend to absorb more of the sun's rays. This heats the glass and much of the heat flows back outdoors. This might make the glass get quite warm, so it's not good to use on double-pane windows. The year-round low-e window films will have only a slightly reflective appearance due to the efficient coating, but it's not excessive. It's likely you won't be able to detect the window film indoors or outdoors. The low-e coating actually is metal that's applied only several atoms thick. Do-it-yourself window film is available in rolls or in precut kits. It is not difficult to install yourself, but you might want to choose professional installation on very large windows. 08/22/05 - Using Geothermal to save on home energy costs "Our house is total electric," he said, "and our bills just kept getting higher and higher every year." A year ago he installed a geothermal system in his 2,400-square foot Rudolph home and has seen his bills drop from $400 per month to $120. "Geothermal is very economical because all you're doing is moving heat rather than creating it," said Steve Knorr of Wisconsin Rapids. "In the winter, you're transferring heat from the groundwater, and in the summer, you're doing the reverse. You're taking the heat from your home and putting it back into the ground." Because it doesn't burn fuel to create heat, it doesn't give off any harmful gases, Mead said. The heat is transferred into pipes containing water and an anti-freeze solution, which are buried below the frost line underground. Below that line, the ground temperature is a constant 45 to 50 degrees throughout the year. Mead said a home could be heated using water as cold as 20 degrees. The water then either travels to a forced air furnace or to coils buried within the floor to produce radiant heat. The discharged water is either pumped back into the ground or back through the system's loop of buried pipes, depending on the system. Czlapinski said he sets the temperature at 70 degrees throughout the year. "The house is kept constant. You don't know if it's heating or cooling unless you look at a little light." A typical system is about 300 percent efficient, which means it will produce 3 kilowatts for every one it uses. A system can be expected to last between 25 and 30 years, and even then, it's usually individual components, not the entire system, which needs replacement. 08/22/05 - Major BioDiesel plant WASHINGTON, Iowa Plans are under way to build a biodiesel plant in Washington in eastern Iowa. A local group has hired the Biodiesel Group of Wall Lake to develop the 50 (m) million dollar plant capable of producing 30 (m) million gallons of the alternative fuel a year. Biodiesel is made primarily from vegetable oil and animal fats. Iowa has three biodiesel plants and at least two others are under construction. 08/22/05 - Lemelsons CON BUSTED! Robert Shillman knew that Ford Motor Co. would never let some skinny, lone inventor rape it for millions. Ford was tough, tougher than Jerome Lemelson. But then, Ford buckled. A U.S. District Court judge ruled against the company. Of the 979 companies that Lemelson lawyer Gerald Hosier would wangle into paying royalties, 800 came after the Ford case concluded. Against the advice of his most trusted associates, Shillman decided to go forward with a lawsuit in September 1998. Hosier had sued some 400 companies for patent infringement in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2000. If Hosier failed, he would lose those cases, which had been put on hold, and perhaps $1 billion more in royalties. More than a year would pass before Pro issued his decision, and when h