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08/29/07 - The open-source approach to clean energy
 Robert Rohatensky came up with the idea of an "energy tower" -- a solar heat pump system for generating (baseload) electricity year round. But instead of refining the concept behind closed doors on his own, Rohatensky has decided to take an open-source approach. He's inviting anybody who is interested to participate in the development of this approach. "The hope is that with an open philosophy that the project shows similar Rapid Application Development and success as Linux and other Open Source Software projects and provides a system that can meet future energy requirements in a sustainable manner." The energy tower would have a hot air cycle where the ambient air is warmer than the ground and a cold air cycle where the ambient air is colder than the ground. The approach relies on the storage of heat in the ground and convection processes that turn turbines to create electricity. You can read the details on the site. Rohatensky doesn't want money. He wants input. "The energy problem and the project to solve it are large and complex and require sources from many fields," he writes on his site. "The initial design and prototype require engineering resources, but there are many portions of the project that require diverse skills from administration, project management, software and web development, marketing, financial organization or even just fresh baking." He welcomes anyone interested in donating time and skill -- anyone who sees merit in the proposed system and wants to help. So, if you're an engineer, techie or strategic thinker with time on your hands and a desire to help, drop Rob a line at bob.rohatensky@sasktel.net - Solar Heat Pump - (via tyler.blogware.com)
08/29/07 - Bleeding, not inflammation, is major cause of early lung infection death
 Researchers believe they have discovered why a bacterial lung infection is so lethal in the early stages, and it's not what medical authorities had thought, according to research published August 23 in the journal Immunity. The study reveals for the first time that a toxin released by bacteria causes severe bleeding in the lungs by patients with pneumococcal pneumonia. It is the bleeding, the authors argue, not inflammation as once thought, which makes the infections deadly. The same study also reveals why antibiotics often fail to help prevent early death. Also called pneumococcus, the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae infects the upper respiratory tracts of the elderly and young children mostly. There are 500,000 cases of pneumococcal pneumonia annually in the United States, with about 40,000 of them fatal, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. "Pneumococcal infection is characterized by fluid build-up in the lungs, and breathing difficulty is the reason that most infections become lethal early on," said Jae Hyang Lim, Ph.D., DVM, instructor in Microbiology & Immunology at the Medical Center and first author on the paper. "The medical establishment had for years believed that the breathing difficulty was brought on by inflammation: the swelling and fluid build-up caused as immune system proteins rushed to the lungs to fight the infection. A medical mystery emerged, however, when our studies revealed that such inflammation was actually lower during the early time period when most people died." The newly published study reveals for the first time that a toxin released by S. pneumoniae causes severe bleeding in the lungs. Normally, competing regulatory pathways maintain a balance between the competing tendencies of blood to either become thinner (more likely to leak bleed out of vessels) or thicker (more likely form blood clots that choke off blood flow through blood vessels). Blood clots can represent either a dangerous blockage of blood flow, or a protective mechanism that prevents unchecked bleeding, all depending on a careful balance.
08/29/07 - Soaring to 6,000ft: the DIY rocket
 A do it yourself rocket named 'The Corpulent Stump' and weighing in at 110lb, soared almost 6,000ft into the air when it blasted off from Fairlie Moor in Ayrshire. Travelling from 0 to 100mph in just over a second and reaching speeds of 469mph, it became the most powerful non-commercial rocket to be launched in Britain before it crashed less than a minute later two miles from its starting point onear Largs. The Stump was designed by IT worker Richard Brown, 39, who built his rocket from scratch, based on a computer model. He spent £4,000 perfecting it and £650 on the launch - it cost about £100 for every second it was airborne. There are only two places in Britain - the Ayrshire site and one in Devon - where engineers are allowed to launch their rockets to such heights. John Bonsor, who started the event, said: "It's getting to the point where it's possible for amateur groups to reach the fringes of space. "Some use the same boosters used on space shuttles."
08/29/07 - Crushed Glass to Be Spread on Beaches
Faced with the constant erosion of Florida's beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass - crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand - to help fill gaps. It's only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass. "Basically, what we're doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state," said Phil Bresee, Broward's recycling manager. The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said. Sand is a valuable commodity in South Florida, where beach-related business generates more than $1 billion a year for Broward alone. Sand to replenish eroded beaches is typically dredged from the ocean floor and piped to shore - about 13 million tons of it since 1970 in Broward. That's enough sand to fill the Empire State Building more than 12 times over. But with reef preservation restricting future dredge sites, sand is becoming scarce. And the price is rising as construction and fuel costs rise and dredge operations are pushed farther offshore. The glass-sand idea grew from the unintentional consequences of an ocean dump site off Northern California near Fort Bragg. Beginning in 1949, garbage - including lots of glass - was dumped over a cliff into the ocean, said Charles Finkl, a marine geologist with Boca Raton-based Coastal Planning and Engineering. Finkl said that while organic material degraded over the years, the glass broke up and became smooth as it tumbled in the surf. The area is now known locally as Glass Beach. Another dump site in Hawaii produced similar results, Finkl said. "You talk about glass beach and people have images of sharp glass shards but it's not that way at all," he said. Recycled glass also has been used for beaches along Lake Hood in New Zealand and on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.
08/29/07 - Product Could Heal Soil After Fires
The millions of acres scorched by wildfires and left susceptible to mudslides could be shored up by spreading inexpensive granules that a lawn care entrepreneur says will keep soil in place when the rainy season arrives. U.S. Forest Service scientists have been testing a product that bonds the clay inside soil to form a "net" to help vegetation recover. Called PAM-12 and developed by a Green Bay lawn care company called Encap, the product is a synthetic chemical that looks like salt and is wrapped in recycled paper. Already this year, nearly 7 million acres have burned across the country, and about 40 fires of at least 500 acres each were raging this week, most in Montana and Idaho. After smoke infiltrates soil, the ground tends to repel water instead of absorb it. So rain stays on the surface and carries away topsoil and nutrients when it cascades downhill. PAM-12 can help prevent that by causing the dirt to form tiny clumps and opening pores for water to soak into. The result is soil that's more absorbent and less apt to be washed away, even on slopes as steep as 60 degrees. PAM-12 costs about half as much as current treatments. Agricultural straw costs about $1,000 per acre, while PAM-12 costs about $500 per acre.
08/29/07 - SUN’S RAYS TO DRIVE Aerial Landing Field - October 1934
 RECENT experiments in the conversion of the sun’s rays into electric power have led to an unusual idea in aerial equipment. It is a dirigible that not only would get its power from the sun but also provide space for a landing field in the air. The ordinary cigar-shaped dirigible would in effect have a slice taken from the upper half of the gas bag. This would provide a large deck on which could be mounted solar photo cells, an airplane runway, and a hangar. Planes could land on the dirigible, floating over the sea, to refuel for trans-ocean passenger service. Another unusual feature of this design, in addition to the landing field, is the use of sun rays to power the motors of the dirigible. Scientists estimate that the sun can develop as much as 86,300 kilowatts or 115,000 horsepower per hour in an area of a square mile. Photo cells convert the sun’s energy into electricity. When this can be done on a practical basis, the roof of an ordinary house can be used to develop electricity for the home.
08/29/07 - Energy Kills, Energy Cures Campaign Launches
The Energy Kills, Energy Cures Campaign has launched supporting the interconnected solution to fighing poverty environmental degradation. The Energy Cures Campaign, a grassroots social and environmental call-to-action, launched across the world motivating people to stop the inherent cycle between poverty, dirty energy and its drastic affect on the environment. Worldwide, 1.6 billion people are without any access to electricity, with an additional 2.4 billion people subjected to rely on dirty fuels for every day use. Typically, dirty energy sources are all that is accessible to impoverished nations. Releasing dangerous particles into the atmosphere, not only does the consumption of this energy have a negative environmental and health impact, there is a significant social-economic one as well. “Statistics show that if a child stays home to collect firewood for cooking, instead of going to school, it is most likely their child will also be forced into a similar reality,” says Gina Rodolico of Energy Cures and Director of Communication for E+Co, the non-profit organization and catalyst behind the Campaign. “And if this child's mother spends four hours of every day hauling water for her family's daily use, the chances for escaping poverty practically vanish. But by investing in local, clean energy entrepreneurs and their businesses, we can develop a sustainable solution to multiple challenges.” As a grassroots movement to support clean energy advancement across the globe, the public's direct involvement is crucial to the overall impact of this initiative. By visiting EnergyCures.org, real life stories and projects of the entrepreneurs illustrate how individual support has a tremendous impact on community. For instance, a tax-deductible donation of $8.33/month (a total year contribution of $100) equals the cost of five clean, efficient cookstoves in Tanzania. An E+Co-supported enterprise, Toyola, distributes these $20 cookstoves to local families. Not only is the local entrepreneur establishing a revenue stream, with use of a cookstove each of the five families save $35 annually in fuel costs. A savings of $35 per family is a significant impact for a country with a per capita GDP of $610. The Energy Cures Campaign seeks to end world poverty while protecting the planet.
08/29/07 - Companies to Introduce Lower-Cost Algae Production System
 Diversified Energy Corporation (DEC) has formed a partnership and licensing arrangement for an algae production system invented by XL Renewables, Inc. The system, called Simgae (for simple algae), utilizes common agriculture and irrigation components to keep costs to a minimum. Capital, operations and maintenance costs for large-scale algae systems have been a barrier to adoption for algae-based fuels processing, according to Diversified. The Simgae approach promises 1/2 - 1/16th the capital cost, profitable oil production costs at $0.08 - $0.12/pound, and low operations and maintenance requirements.
08/29/07 - Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties
Cases show fraud exposers have been vilified, fired, or detained for weeks. One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse. Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit. Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.
“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. “Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said. They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.
08/29/07 - Radio Static Used as Weather Warning - December 1924
Wireless Fan’s Jinx Harnessed by Power Company to Tell in Advance When Rain Clouds Will Increase Demand for Lights. STATIC electricity, the bugbear of the radio fan, has been harnessed in a big electric-light plant to give automatic warning, hours in advance, of an approaching storm whose dark rain clouds will cause a sudden demand for an enormously increased volume of current. The radio warning is based on the fact that summer storms are accompanied by electrical disturbances covering a much larger field than the storm itself. These static manifestations are so strong that they whistle, wail and howl through the earphones or loud speaker of a receiving set and drown out ordinary broadcasting. In converting the static into signals, an ordinary antenna mounted on the roof of the power house is used, while the detector itself consists of a short-circuiting switch, spark gap, coherer, relay and battery; a bell, which also acts as a deco-lierer; a condenser and a ground connection. The oscillating current set up by the static travels to and from the ground through the spark gap, coherer and condenser. The outfit is arranged so that the bell automatically varies its signal as the storm approaches. From two to five hours before it arrives, the hell rings at intervals of from five to fifteen minutes. The difference in the advance signal depends on whether the storm is following a straight or roundabout course. The operator in charge of the lighting system regards the ringing at intervals merely as an advance warning, and pays no further attention to it, for it is always possible that the storm may change its direction and pass around the city. As the clouds approach, however, the bell rings oftener, until, when the storm is less than two hours away, the bell begins striking every half minute. The reserve boilers are then ordered into service, auxiliaries of additional generating units are started, and the generators themselves begin turning over at low speed. A half hour before the storm is due, the bell unites its periodic strokes with a continuous ringing, though the sky may still remain clear as far as the eye can see.
08/29/07 - Functional MRI Poised to Create New Industries
 While fMRI dates back to the early 1990s, hitherto it has been used mainly by doctors in hospitals to make diagnoses. The commercialization of brain scanning is a recent development, spurred by the refinement of the technology. Omneuron, which Dr. deCharms founded in 2001 and whose research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, uses fMRI to teach people how to play with their own heads. Other entrepreneurs are working on ways to deploy fMRI as a lie detector, a tool for conducting marketing research or an instrument to make brain surgeries safer and more precise. Omneuron, a start-up in Menlo Park, Calif., has created technologies that teach sufferers to think away their pain, and plans to similarly treat addiction, depression and other intractable neurological and psychological conditions. Using large scanners to measure blood flow to different parts of the brain, the technology makes the brain’s activity visible by revealing which of its parts are busiest when we perform different tasks.
08/29/07 - 'Science Guy' Boo'd in Texas for Stating Scientific Fact
Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
08/29/07 - As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
 No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo. But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water. Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life. China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
08/29/07 - Does America need a Recession?
The late Rudi Dornbusch, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, once remarked: “None of the post-war expansions died of old age. They were all murdered by the Fed.” When the Fed cut its discount rate on August 17th, it admitted for the first time that the credit crunch could hurt the economy. The markets are betting it will soon cut its main federal funds rate. Economists are arguing vigorously about how much damage falling house prices and the subprime mortgage crisis will do. But there is one question that is rarely asked: even if a downturn is in the offing, should the Fed try to prevent it?
08/27/07 - Milestone in magnetic cooling
 The first milestone in magnetic cooling has been achieved. Between 5 and 10 degrees of cooling - this was the success criteria for the first milestone in a project involving magnetic cooling at Risø National Laboratory. And the figure is currently at 8.7°C (47.66F) - this means that a refrigerator at room temperature (20°C - 68F) can be cooled to almost 11°C - 51.8F. Of course, this is not quite enough to keep the milk cold, but the project’s test setup also has only the one objective of conducting research in different materials, varying operating conditions and the strength of the magnetic field. Magnetic cooling technology exploits the fact that when a magnetic material, in this case the element gadolinium, is magnetised, heat is produced as a by-product of entropy. The principle of entropy is that there will always be a constant amount of order/disorder in a substance. When the magnet puts the substance in “order”, it has to get rid of the excess disorder - and this becomes heat. Conversely, when the magnetic field is again removed, the substance becomes cold. The heat is transferred to a fluid that is pumped back and forth past the substance inside a cylinder. The end that becomes cold will be located inside the refrigerator and the warm end will be outside.
08/27/07 - 2003 article - Acoustic Refrigeration
The most common chemical refrigerants, chlorofluorocarbons (commonly known as CFCs), are ozone rippers, banned by a 1996 international convention. But their replacements, hydrofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HFCs and HCFCs, are also global-warming villains. So the two organizations turned to a team lead by Steven Garrett, a Penn State professor of acoustics -- and former drummer -- who has been working for years to build a refrigerator that relies on sound waves, rather than toxins, to take the temperature down. How is that possible? To oversimplify, blasts of sound from a speaker create pressure. And when this pressure is applied to a gas in an enclosed space -- as it is in Garrett's design -- the gas heats up. The heat is then transferred through a series of woven stainless steel screens, taken into a heat exchanger, and carried out of the system. "It's a little like a (firefighters') bucket brigade, carrying heat from one to the next to the next," said Matt Poese, a Penn State research associate working with Garrett. The Penn State fridge cranks up to 173 decibels -- hundreds of thousands of times louder than what actually hurts people's ears. But from the outside, it's no noisier than your typical icebox. The noise generated by the Penn State fridge can only be reached when the gas is under tremendous amounts of pressure -- 10 atmospheres worth. If the gas escapes, the pressure dissipates and the sound dies down.
08/27/07 - Study Supports Link Between Diabetes, High-fructose Corn Syrup
Researchers have found new evidence that soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children. Drinks containing the syrup had high levels of reactive compounds that have been shown by others to have the potential to trigger cell and tissue damage that could cause the diabetes, a growing epidemic.
08/27/07 - James May asks what's next for the motor car?
 (Really good article about the history of cars. - JWD) An hour in a Model T Ford is enough to make you wonder how this car lark ever caught on the way it did. The Model T was designed and built "for the great multitude", as Ford himself put it, and showed that cars might, after all, be accessible to ordinary people. It pioneered the moving production line, and put the planet's most forward-thinking people on wheels. It was an integral part of America's pioneering attitude. The car, unlike the aeroplane or the ship, was never turned into a significant instrument of war, so never benefited from the quantum technological leaps that war tends to force upon anything useful to its pursuit. In times of war, car factories are among the first industrial concerns to be commandeered for the production of other things. By the year 2000, there was compelling evidence to suggest that the car of the future might run on electricity generated by an on-board power station in the form of a hydrogen fuel cell, and might be steered and managed entirely - even autonomously - by computer.
08/27/07 - Patent Changes
Examination Support - Patents filed after Nov 1st will be allowed only 5 independent claims and 25 total claims without requiring added examination support, specific filing support will be required for applications with more than this number of claims. Continuation Limits - A common means to extend the life of a patent is to file a continuation with new claims on the invention which can be better tuned to the market’s adoption of the technology and a new, later date of filing and expiration. The PTO now requires details for how applicants must file continuances providing why claims weren’t filed with the original patent. Multiple Applications on the same Filing Date - The PTO also has increased the filing requirements for applications referring to the same priority or filing date to add more clarity to applications referring back to the same applications.
08/27/07 - Firm's innovation could allow drill platforms, naval bases at sea
 An Urbana-based company is hoping to sell clients on an invention that could keep huge platforms afloat in deep water. Conceivably, the device could make possible drilling platforms, mobile ports and even military bases in the middle of the ocean. The idea behind VersaBuoy dates back about seven years, when a group of oil companies asked Jon Khachaturian to devise a way to keep a platform stable during a deep-water lift. Versabar Inc., is based in the Houston and New Orleans areas and has provided rigging systems for 30,000 lifts. To solve the oil companies' problem, Khachaturian had to figure out how to keep a platform stable in water that's 4,000 to 6,000 feet deep, where 15-foot swells are common. The solution was to support the deck with four columns extending down from each corner of the platform. That would reduce the motions caused by the ocean swells. Water could be pumped out of the columns, resulting in upward pressure. The pressure would lift the platform off its transport barge and keep it stable. Khachaturian devised an articulating joint at the top of each column. That allows the columns to be moved by the waves, while the platform remains relatively motionless. Khachaturian thought VersaBuoy was a neat idea, but other business ventures didn't give him enough time to devote to it. That's where his brother came in. With oil prices rising the last couple years, the Khachaturians realized oil companies would be more interested in pursuing deep-water ventures. They figured the time might be right for VersaBuoy. More info at vbuoy.com
08/27/07 - AI system predicts medicine's hidden powers
Treatments for new or drug-resistant infectious diseases may already be in our medicine cabinets, say the molecular biologists responsible for developing an artificial-intelligence system that can predict unknown antibiotic properties of existing drugs. Many drugs have unexpected or secondary effects - most famously Viagra, Cherkasov points out. Originally developed to combat high blood pressure and angina, Viagra turned out to be effective at treating erectile dysfunction in men. More mundanely, the commonly used cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin also acts as a potent antibiotic. Artem Cherkasov says he and his team have created an artificial-intelligence system that can tell an antibiotic drug from one that's not with high accuracy. They first trained the system by feeding in the structures of thousands of known antibiotics, as well as drugs without any bacteria-killing abilities. The system then uses this information to examine the structure of drugs it hasn't seen before and predict whether they will kill bacteria or not. Cherkasov says the system throws up all kinds of unexpected results. When the system identifies a potential antibiotic, there is often no way of knowing how it actually works. "The chemical structures of compounds we identify usually look nothing like known antibiotics," he adds. "But we don't really care how it works. We just need some first line of defence." Researchers could do this computational work in preparation for new diseases which would give them a database of candidate antibiotics. Then when a new disease emerges, the drugs could be quickly put to the test, to see if they kill the microbes, he suggests.
08/27/07 - Letter from Utopia
 We have never met, yet we are not strangers. In a certain sense, you and I are close kin… I am one of your possible futures. If all goes well, you will one day become me. Should that happen, then I am not only a possible future of yours but your actual future, a coming phase of you. I want tell you about my possible life, how wonderful it is, so that you may choose this future for yourself. Although this letter is in the singular, I am really writing on behalf of my contemporaries, and we are addressing ourselves to all of your contemporaries. Among our numbers are many who are possible futures of your people. Some of us are possible futures of children that you have not yet given birth to. Some of us are possible artificial persons that you may one day create. What unites us is that we are all dependent on you to make us real. You could think of this note as though it were an invitation to a ball - a ball that will only take place if people turn up. We call the lives we lead here “Utopia”. The challenge I put before you is one of self-transformation. To grow up. This is not only about technology, but technology is necessary to participate in this way of life. If you want to live and play on my level, you need to acquire new capacities. To reach Utopia, and experience life here, you must discover the means to three fundamental transformations. (via alfin2100.blogspot.com/)
08/27/07 - Swatch founder Hayek aims for cheap, clean small car -- again
The man behind the micro-sized Smart car, the head of Swiss watch group Swatch, wants to develop a fuel cell engine for an affordable "green" vehicle, a company spokeswoman said Friday. A spokeswoman confirmed a report in Swiss magazine Hebdo, which reported Swatch chairman Nicolas G. Hayek as saying: "I want to do everything within my powers to accelerate the development of alternative and renewable energy." The project echoes Hayek's original plans in the 1990s to make the "Swatchmobile" or Smart car, an innovative and attractively designed but affordable electric-powered small vehicle. However, the concept was watered down by Hayek's second industrial partner, German car giant Daimler. Daimler resorted to petrol or diesel power for the Smart and sold it at a premium price for a small car, prompting the Swiss entrepreneur and watchmaker to pull out of the venture. The main technological challenges for fuel cell engines are reducing the cost of expensive metals needed for the batteries, making hydrogen available at lower prices and improving the stocking of gases.
08/27/07 - Top idea provides cold comfort for car owners
 After two years of painstaking research and experiments on several thousand ordinary umbrellas, Zhou and her colleagues invented a car sunshade. Zhou's brainchild can reduce the temperature inside a sedan parked in the sun by 20 to 30 degrees Centigrade. It has two national patents and has been named as an energy-conservation product by local government. Usually the temperature inside an idle sedan in the sun is estimated at 50 to 70 degrees. "When the engine is started, it takes a long time before the temperature drops via the air-conditioner," she said. "It is a waste of time and gas. "I recommended the car sunshade to some of my friends who later told me that about 50 to 60 liters of gas could be saved in one summer by using the product." Zhou's invention is rectangular and covers the body of a sedan from the engine to the trunk. However, the large object is only half a meter long and weighs just 1.8 kilograms when folded up. A special feature of the sunshade is that its frame is made of the material used in fishing rods. "We adopted this material as it is flexible, firm, rust proof and won't scratch the surface of the sedan." Besides six small hooks to fix the sunshade onto the sedan, Zhou made a special design on the bottom of the sunshade handle. "I install a lock at the bottom in case of theft and use a kind of special rubber to stick the lock onto the windshield," she said. "The material is powerful enough to sustain a weight of 80 kilograms so that it can ensure the safety of the sunshade."
08/27/07 - Gamma Rays From Thunderclouds
Gamma rays have been detected at a Japanese nuclear plant, whose origin was thunderclouds high overhead (abstract, article PDF). The theory is that showers of electrons caused by cosmic rays, when they encounter the high electric fields present in thunderstorm clouds, can be accelerated to energies above 10 MeV and result in bremsstrahlung photons detectable on the ground.
08/27/07 - Woodland Park company makes diesel engine more efficient, cleaner
 Eddie Sturman’s goal is to help save the planet. Woodland Park-based Sturman Industries, which the couple founded in 1989, has created a digital control system for diesel engines. The Sturmans say their system improves fuel efficiency, horsepower and torque, reduces exhaust emissions and lowers the cost of diesel engines in everything from motorcycles and cars to construction equipment and ships. The Sturmans have spoken previously about separate components of their camless engine system, such as the fuel injectors, valves and microprocessor controls. “What we’re doing is a really different approach than what’s been used in the past,” said Eddie Sturman, who said he developed the foundation of his digital technology working on NASA’s Apollo space program. Industry experts have seen converting fuel to motion, known as combustion, as uncontrollable because of the speed at which that occurs, he said. “We challenged that idea - digital valves can control the fuel and air during combustion - so you get more energy and you need less fuel,” he said. Sturman’s engine can run on up to 100 percent biodiesel fuel or regular diesel, and the digital technology improves fuel efficiency by 50 percent over regular diesel engines, triples power and shaves $2,000 to $12,000 off the engine cost typically spent on meeting government emissions standards, Eddie Sturman said. More info at sturmanindustries.com/
08/27/07 - Make a Remote Camera Trigger
Build a remote camera trigger this weekend with publishing company Wiley's free instructional PDF. The guide offers detailed instructions (44 pages worth, in fact) for making wired, delay, and interval triggers that so you can take pictures without holding and pressing the shutter button on your camera-allowing you to set up your camera and snap shots without disturbing the subject or position of the camera. If you've been looking for ways to improve or extend your photo portfolio, a remote trigger could open up a whole new world.
08/27/07 - Solar waves make Earth ring like a bell
 Sounds generated deep in the fiery depths of the Sun make Earth, its atmosphere, and even its magnetic field ring like many cosmic bells. The vibrations in the Sun have two causes: pressure waves and gravity waves, which are referred to as p-mode and g-mode, respectively. Scientists hope to use the g-mode waves to study the interior of the Sun, in the same way that seismic data can provide an insight into the inner workings of Earth.The solar wind carries the field into interplanetary space, where space probes like Ulysses can pick up the signal. The solar wind also interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, causing it to vibrate in sympathy. From our magnetic field, the signal is picked up by our many technological systems, as well as the planet itself. The researchers add that the tones are far beyond the edge of human hearing, some 12 octaves below the lowest detectable note. While orchestras tune up to the A above middle C, at around 440 Hertz, the Earth rings at a much more stately 100-5000microHz. That is one vibration every 278 hours, or 11.5 days.
08/27/07 - Planetary Time Jumps
(Too many scifi movies or weak watch batteries perhaps? - JWD) About 2001, some observations were made by myself and others. An irregularity of time flow was observed. Over several months, I asked questions of people located all over the world. Have they observed some strange time effects ? The answer was YES. After some deliberation, both myself and a fellow researcher concluded that our entire planet was experiencing a Planetary Time Jump, or PTJ. These jumps have been noticed by people in many strange ways. These include a change in solar position, repeated events, and even missing events. A physical observation observed, was related to quartz clocks and watch time, verses AC line powered clock time. Over just one month, the Quartz clock was found to be about 4 to 6 minutes SLOWER than the time on a satellite TV or AC powered clock. Geographical location effect was not significant. Note that these three types of time keeping use totally different methods to keep time. Television time is derived from an atomic standard. This provides the precision required by the FCC to generate the video signals.
08/27/07 - Catching the beetle that causes bee hives to collapse
 "The small hive beetle is an exotic pest that originates from South Africa and was found in Florida in 1998. It has now spread throughout the eastern and mid-western United States, causing considerable damage to honey bee colonies." So says Peter Teal, at the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US. As a consequence, the hive beetle is causing a considerable headache for the US beekeeping industry. Most of the damage is done by the beetles' larvae, which feed on honey and pollen. Larval excrement also causes honey to ferment, making it inedible to bees. In highly infested colonies where larval feeding is extensive, bees tend to leave, causing the hive populations to collapse. So, Teal and colleagues have designed a trap to beat the beetle: a box that sits at the bottom of the hive covered with a mesh that is large enough to allow beetles through, but prevents bees from entering. The trap contains pollen and honey sprinkled with yeast that causes it to ferment, releasing smells that attract the beetles, which then get stuck inside. The Florida team says that although the trap may not eradicate hive beetles, it should allow bee keepers to control their numbers, and reduce damage.
08/27/07 - Weight loss spam
Spammers must stop sending unwanted and illegal e-mail messages about hoodia weight-loss products and human growth hormone anti-aging products the Federal Trade Commission alleges don’t work. At the FTC’s request, a district court judge ordered a halt to the e-mails and to product claims that the FTC charges are false and unsubstantiated.
08/27/07 - The Great Iraq Swindle
 How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury. Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up. And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureaucracy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.
08/27/07 - Electronic books with musty book smell launched
A survey of 600 college students conducted by pollster Zogby International found that 43 per cent of students identified smell, either a new or old smell, as the quality they most liked about books as physical objects. Six out of 10 students also preferred buying used textbooks over new or electronic textbooks even though e-books are generally a third less expensive. E-books sales have been slow to take off. In an attempt to persuade college students to try e-textbooks, website CafeScribe.com said it was launching "the world's first smelly e-book." CafeScribe Chief Executive Bryce Johnson said that from September the company will send every e-textbook purchaser a scratch and sniff sticker with a musty "old book" smell. The survey, conducted between August 15 and 21, found three out of 10 of students associated "mustiness" with the books they most loved, although 16 per cent associated best-loved books with the smell of "freshly-ground coffee." "By placing these stickers on their computers they can give their e-books the same musty book smell they know and love from used textbooks -- without any of the residual DNA you often find stuck to the pages of used textbooks," Johnson said in a statement.
08/25/07 - Concentrator for more Efficient Solar Cell Power
 Following a successful high-volume run of its new breakthrough solar panels, International Automated Systems, Inc. has been conducting tests to identify the parameters of its new product. The new panels have delivered an exciting performance that is in line with preliminary expectations. IAUS’s unique thin-film solar panels have a solar insolence transmittance efficiency of nearly 92%- virtually the highest transmittance physically possible of any material. These breakthrough solar panels have shown a conversion of solar energy from the sun into temperatures of over 1,300 degrees F. Initial IAUS data has demonstrated that IAUS’s new solar panels focus as high as 30% more solar energy onto its receiver than traditional solar power trough systems typically achieve. Recent advancements will likely increase this number again to more than 50%. IAUS’s solar panels have an estimated life-span of greater than fifty years when properly maintained, and are inexpensive to replace. Low-cost energy produced by IAUS’s new patented and patent-pending solar technology can be used to generate electricity or produce clean fuels such as hydrogen and green methanol (gasoline replacements) at a competitive price. Many experts had predicted that no solar power technology would likely accomplish this milestone before the year 2025.
08/25/07 - China hails car trial a 'success'
A four-day scheme that took 1.3 million cars off Beijing's streets reduced air pollution by 15-20%, officials in the Chinese capital say. Moving around the city was also easier during the test period, with the speed of vehicles up by more than 50%. Four types of pollutants, including carbon monoxide and small particles, were tested over the four-day period, which ended on Monday. Mr Du, who bicycled to work during the car ban, could not say whether the improved air quality would have made the atmosphere good enough to run a marathon. Fewer private cars on the road meant more people used public transport. Passenger numbers were up by 15%, it was revealed. This meant buses - there were 800 more of them on the roads - could travel at 20 km/h (12mph) instead of the usual 14 km/h (9mph). Chinese officials also had a kind word for the 6,500 police officers on duty during the four days, many of whom had "overcome fatigue" to ensure the test went off smoothly. During the test period, odd-numbered cars were banned on Saturday and Monday, while cars with even-numbered registrations had to stay off the roads on Friday and Sunday.
08/25/07 - Sony Develops 'Bio Battery' Generating Electricity from Sugar
 Sony today announced the development of a bio battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates (sugar) utilizing enzymes as its catalyst, through the application of power generation principles found in living organisms. Test cells of this bio battery have achieved power output of 50 mW, currently the world's highest level for passive-type bio batteries. The output of these test cells is sufficient to power music play back on a memory-type Walkman. In order to realize the world's highest power output, Sony developed a system of breaking down sugar to generate electricity that involves efficiently immobilizing enzymes and the mediator (electronic conduction materials) while retaining the activity of the enzymes at the anode. Sony also developed a new cathode structure which efficiently supplies oxygen to the electrode while ensuring that the appropriate water content is maintained. Optimizing the electrolyte for these two technologies has enabled these power output levels to be reached. The bio battery does not require mixing, or the convection of glucose solution or air; as it is a passive-type battery, it works simply by supplying sugar solution into the battery unit. The cubic (39 mm along each edge) cell produces 50 mW, representing the world's highest power output among passive-type bio batteries of comparable volume. By connecting four cubic cells, it is possible to power a memory-type Walkman (NW-E407) together with a pair of passive-type speakers (no external power source). The bio battery casing is made of vegetable-based plastic (polylactate), and designed in the image of a biological cell.
08/25/07 - Russia's Ultimate Water Blaster
 A team from Special Materials Ltd of St Petersberg have been working on what they describe as 'non-lethal weapon based on electro-hydrodynamical effect.' They're making a hand-held water cannon capable of blasting the target off his feet at close range. The basis of their invention involves a brief but intense electrical discharge in water as 'an effective source of high and super pressure waves' which then drive water through a nozzle. In a paper delivered at the European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons , the team conclude that: The assessments done have shown the possibility of designing a portable self-contained unit of 1 - 3 Kg [2 to 7 lbs] that will generate a liquid jet with kinetic energy of up to 100 Joules. Such a jet will provide a damage effect at 5m [17 feet] distance. The prototype weapon fired a 12g (about half an ounce) blast of water at 60 meters/second (200 fps) in tests, but this is only the start. What they're working towards is something that will compete with bean-bag rounds and other kinetic energy weapons, and like them will be able to knock down a taget at twenty feet. The makers report that at 12 feet the spot diameter was about a foot, so impact would be spread over a much wider area than with a solid round, and will that much less risk of damage. The effect should be more like getting his by a sack of rice rather than a baseball bat. This should be an improvement over bean-bags, which are generally canvas bags filled with shot or similar, and though generally non-lethal they can certainly injure. A water projectile could produce the same level of impact force but without the risk or broken ribs or other damage including penetrating injury that can result from bean bags. One police force flatly states in their press release that "The bean bag round is designed to cause injuries in order to save lives."
08/25/07 - Recover Files from Damaged CDs and DVDs with CD Recovery Toolbox
 Windows only: Freeware application CD Recovery Toolbox finds and retrieves files on scratched or otherwise damaged CDs and DVDs. Under normal circumstances, a badly scratched disc might show up as completely unreadable by your computer. CD Recovery Toolbox can read the undamaged portions of the disc and display the data that's still accessible. From there, you can extract whichever files and folders you want. The application doesn't promise access to every file that you originally burned to the disc, but it will recover as much as it can read. CD Recovery Toolbox is freeware, Windows only. I don't have a sufficiently damaged disc on hand, so if you have a chance to test the program's performance, let us know how it worked for you in the comments.
08/25/07 - TubeStop Extension: stops YouTube ads
The TubeStop Firefox extension that I wrote in order to stop YouTube videos from auto-playing also has the serendipitous side-effect of removing ads from YouTube videos. Since YouTube is only serving ads through the player on their main site, and not on the embeddable/syndicated player, and TubeStop works by replacing YouTube's native player with the embeddable version, you won't see any ads when you're using TubeStop.
08/25/07 - Quickly Remove Backgrounds with Photoshop
 Remove the background from any photo quickly and easily in Photoshop with weblog ThemBid's quick and dirty tutorial. Using Photoshop's Extract filter, trace the area you want to extract with the highlight tool and then color in the traced section using the fill tool. Excluding a few of the finer points, that's about all there is to it, and it works surprisingly well. Following previous Photoshop guides I've used the pen tool for this sort of extraction, but clearly the Extract filter offers the quicker and easier route. This is a great technique to have in your Photoshopping toolbox.
08/25/07 - Partition and Image Your Hard Drive with the System Rescue CD
You've just reinstalled Windows from scratch-again-but this time you want to preserve your sparkling clean setup for instant restoration down the road. Instead of dropping cash on Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image, burn yourself a free, bootable Linux-based System Rescue CD. The System Rescue CD includes open source tools GParted and Partimage, which can create a new partition and save your fresh Windows installation as a restorable image for the price of zero dollars. Never stare at those creeping Windows installation progress bars again: with the System Rescue CD, you can have that fresh new Windows feeling any time you need it. Here's how. (via lifehacker.com)
08/25/07 - Space Resort Opens in 2012
 The Galactic Suite Project, run by directors Xavier Claramunt and Marsal Gifra, aims to offer travellers the “most thrilling and transcendent experience ever” with a stay on board their orbital luxury getaway. Upon arrival at the first ever (in our solar system at least) space resort, guests will be able to experience a new world of sensations including weightlessness, star gazing, amazing views of planet Earth with 15 sunsets in a day - not to mention being aboard a spaceship that takes you from 0 to 28,000kmh in 10 minutes. Each journey is likely to take 18 weeks including time for training, the stay at Galactic Suite and return spaceship transfers. The project is due for completion in 2012 and tickets will be on sale from as early as 2008. The price will be slightly more affordable that the current cost for a walk in space (US$35 million), with a three-day stay estimated at around €3 million (US$4 million). Claramunt and Gifra believe the trip is a bargain considering “this is the first package deal, as it includes transport from the tourist’s home to the Caribbean island, the training required for journeys into orbit, the flight to the hotel and three nights accommodation in the Galactic Suite”. The Galactic Suite Project was set up in Barcelona in January 2007 by various architects, aerospace engineers and industrial engineers from Spain and the US. The founders have already made initial contact with Japanese and UAE private investors interested in investing in the project which will require US$3 billion to complete. The aim of the project is to develop an “orbital hotel chain” with modular space accommodation based on the concept of how a grapevine grows that will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 300 miles (450 km). The design and position in relation to the equator will allow visitors to orbit the Earth 15 times every day - and to see 15 sunrises!
08/25/07 - Former state employee wins reverse discrimination case
Mark Pasternak said he lost his state job helping troubled youths because he couldn’t stand working under a black boss who called him racist names like “cracker,” “polack” and “stupid white boy.” Pasternak was dismissed from his position as a youth worker with the state Office of Children and Family Services in 1999. But today, he feels some relief and vindication. After a rare reverse racial discrimination trial in Buffalo’s federal court, a jury Tuesday awarded Pasternak $150,000. Jurors found that his former boss, Tommy E. Baines, discriminated against him racially and created a hostile working environment.
08/25/07 - 100mpg at 100mph
 Introducing the VentureOne, a revolutionary 3-wheel, tilting, plug-in Hybrid vehicle. This unique 2-passenger flex-fuel Hybrid vehicle will achieve 100 miles per gallon, accelerate from 0-60 in 6 seconds with a top speed of over 100 mph, yet at a retail price of under $20,000. Carver Engineering was faced with the challenge of designing a slender vehicle that would not fall over, as most slim vehicles were prone. Their solution was to make the vehicle do what two-wheeled vehicles did, tilt when cornering. However, due to the size and weight required to make the vehicle enclosed, the tilting operation could not be left to the driver’s control. Therefore, an automatic system that takes over the balance control was required in order to maintain the ideal tilting angles under all imaginable driving conditions, such as at all speeds and accelerations and during rapid emergency maneuvers, and also on slippery or slanting road surfaces. The result was DVC technology, a hydro-mechanical system that splits the steering input from the driver into a front-wheel steering angle and a tilting angle of the chassis.
08/25/07 - The Science of Out-of-Body Experiences
Get ready to see yourself in a new light. Two papers released this week by the journal Science describe what seem to be the first lab-induced out-of-body experiences in healthy people. Using goggles hooked up to video cameras, and sticks to poke and stroke, researchers subjected study participants to a variety of visual and physical cues to confuse their brain about their body's location. Sound a bit impractical? Consider, then, how the studies relate to humankind's most enduring question: what makes us ourselves in the first place? "I'm not really interested in out-of-body experiences," says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the study's authors and an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "I'm really interested in in-body experiences: how the brain keeps and updates a model of the world and the body. To have a perception of your own body is the foundation of self-consciousness."
08/25/07 - Larry King Poll on Religion (no Muslim?)
08/23/07 - 130mpg Hydraulic Car
 The piston of the free-piston internal combustion engine pumps hydraulic fluid into the accumulator. It stores the energy by compressing the gas bladder inside. The engine will be turned off automatically when the accumulator is filled - and turned on again shortly before it becomes empty. The pressurized fluid drives the wheelmotors, one in each wheel. Their driving power is continuously variable from zero to maximum speed. The wheelmotors are reversed during braking and become pumps. They are powerful enough to stop the car like disk brakes, while recuperating the entire braking energy. The energy is stored in the accumulator and used again for driving. The ‘round-trip-efficiency’ during braking is 70% to 85%. The energy is stored in the accumulator and will be used again to drive the car. (via alfin2100.blogspot.com)
08/23/07 - The creative power of many vs. the power of one
Keith Sawyer’s “Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration” is an intriguing look at the role of collaboration in creativity and innovation. It will likely challenge your understanding of how innovation happens and how a culture that encourages innovation can be developed within your organization.
The main theme of the book is that although most of us think of innovation as the result of the work of a “lone genius,” that is often not the case. Instead, the book presents the case for creativity and innovation as being group-based and collaborative in nature.
08/23/07 - Beefing up the BigBelly business
 The high-tech trashcans are among hundreds produced by Needham-based Seahorse Power Company and shipped to street corners as near as Newton and as far away as the Middle East and Australia. Three years after founder Jim Poss built the world’s only curbside solar-powered trash compactor from scratch, his company is about to launch a slimmer, sexier BigBelly. “This is not just a receptacle,” Bruce Todtfeld, vice president of marketing, said as he stood beside the newest generation. “It’s a more efficient system of municipal garbage collection.” By automatically compacting using a solar-powered ram, the BigBelly keeps sidewalks clear of overflowing litter and reduces the number of trips municipal workers have to make to empty the curbside cans. The machine requires no electricity and little maintenance, and has a mailbox-like lid that keeps pests and human hands alike out of the trash compactor. It also comes with a hefty price tag: $3,600 to $3,900 for the old model, or $3,600 to $4,200 for the new one.
Needham bought one machine in 2005 and a second last year using DPW funds. With only two machines, Hoyland said he hasn’t seen a huge savings in time and money, but has noticed that the town’s BigBelly trash compactors help keep the sidewalk clean and pests out. The BigBelly, which holds four to five times as much garbage as a traditional trash can, can help reduce emissions from diesel-powered garbage trucks used to collect curbside garbage. “You’re sending a really inefficient vehicle to pick that up,” said Todtfeld. With the BigBelly compactors, “instead of picking up something four or five times, you’re picking it up once." According to green-energy advocacy group Inform Inc., the typical municipal garbage truck gets less than 3 miles per gallon. In all, American garbage trucks use more than 1 billion gallons of diesel gasoline a year, or 20 million gallons a week. The BigBelly also collects compacted trash in an inner plastic bin, so it doesn’t need a plastic bag. Its solar panels can operate in ambient light, such as on a cloudy day. Poss said the BigBelly has also stood up well to the rough life of the streets. Maintaining the machines costs, on average, $5.50 per unit, per year, including vandalism.
08/23/07 - Local engineer's plan to zap pest-plant gains positive results
Bob Holland of Throapham House, just outside Dinnington, is well aware of the problems that Japanese knotweed has given to gardeners for decades. His septic tank was once damaged as a result of the rampaging plant. Various methods of control have been tried in the past, with varying success. Now Bob thinks he may just have the answer - in the shape of an electrical device which will stop the pest-plant in its tracks.
08/23/07 - Aluminum pellets may facilitate hydrogen-powered car, but…
 A professor at Purdue University in the US has developed a method for extracting hydrogen from water using an aluminum alloy. He believes this method could be used to power cars, although he recognizes that there are significant hurdles that need to be overcome before this break-through becomes a commercially-viable alternative to gasoline. "The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," said Woodall. According to Woodall, the technology could be used to drive small internal combustion engines in various applications, including portable emergency generators, lawn mowers and chain saws. He also believes that the process could, in theory, also be used to replace gasoline for cars and trucks. Hydrogen is generated spontaneously when water is added to pellets of the alloy, which is made of aluminum and a metal called gallium. Researchers have shown how hydrogen is produced when water is added to a small tank containing the pellets. Hydrogen produced in such a system could be fed directly to an engine, such as those on lawn mowers. "When water is added to the pellets, the aluminum in the solid alloy reacts because it has a strong attraction to the oxygen in the water," Woodall said. This reaction splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in water, releasing hydrogen in the process. The gallium is critical to the process because it hinders the formation of a skin normally created on aluminum's surface after oxidation. This skin usually prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum, acting as a barrier. Preventing the skin's formation allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used. Woodall said that because the technology makes it possible to use hydrogen instead of gasoline to run internal combustion engines it could be used for cars and trucks. That's the good news. Now for the bad news. Woodall admits that in order for the technology to be economically competitive with gasoline, however, the cost of recycling aluminum oxide must be reduced. "Right now it costs more than $1 a pound to buy aluminum, and, at that price, you can't deliver a product at the equivalent of $3 per gallon of gasoline," Woodall said. Woodhall does have a solution for this problem. He believes the cost of aluminum could be reduced by recycling it from the alumina using a process called fused salt electrolysis.
08/23/07 - Predicting Asthma attacks
Days before the muscles around asthmatics' airways tighten, their breath carries a tell-tale sign that an asthma attack is imminent -- and a University of Pittsburgh professor's invention seeks to catch that clue in time to save lives. An inexpensive inhaler-sized device, yet to be manufactured, could measure levels of nitric oxide -- a gas that increases in the breath of people whose airways are becoming inflamed -- and could help stop an asthma attack before it starts. Star's device consists of a tiny sensor fitted into a small, hand-held tube that a person can breathe into. It is powered by a watch battery and displays results on a small screen. The sensor is made of a one-atom thick sheet of graphite rolled into a tube 100,000 times smaller than a human hair. The battery runs a current through the nanotube. In the presence of even minute amounts of nitric oxide, the current changes, which allows a person to track nitric oxide levels.
08/23/07 - Underwater turbines set to generate record power
 By the end of the year, twin underwater turbines should be generating 1.2 megawatts of electricity off the coast of Northern Ireland in a landmark demonstration of tidal power technology. The underwater turbines look and work very much like wind power turbines. Each blade is 15 to 20 metres across and is mounted on an axis that attaches to a 3-metre-wide pile driven into the seabed. Tide-driven currents will move the rotors at speeds of between 10 and 20 revolutions per minute, which the company claims is too slow to affect marine life. The turbines will drive a gearbox that will, in turn, drive an electric generator and the resulting electricity will be transmitted to the shore via an underwater cable. The Strangford Lough tidal generator is intended purely as a demonstration project. Eventually, MCT intends to build farms of turbines consisting of 10 to 20 pairs each. Each turbine requires a piece of equipment called a jack-up barge for installation. The barge anchors itself to the sea floor and drills a hole that sets the turbines in place.
08/23/07 - Cow-powered fuel cells grow smaller, mightier
Cows could one day help to meet the rise in demand for alternative energy sources, say Ohio State University researchers that used microbe-rich fluid from a cow to generate electricity in a small fuel cell. This new microbial fuel cell is a redesign of a larger model that the researchers created a few years ago. The new cell is a quarter of the size of the original model, yet can produce about three times the power, said Hamid Rismani-Yazdi, a doctoral student in food, agricultural and biological engineering at Ohio State University. Experiments showed that it took two of the new cells to produce enough electricity to recharge a AA-sized battery. It took four of the first-generation fuel cells to recharge just one of these batteries. Rismani-Yazdi is the lead author of a new study of cellulose-based microbial fuel cells. The source of power for these fuel cells comes from the breakdown of cellulose by a variety of bacteria in rumen fluid, the microbe-rich fluid found in a cow's rumen, the largest chamber of a cow's stomach. To create power, researchers fill one compartment of a microbial fuel cell with cellulose and rumen fluid. “Energy is produced as the bacteria break down cellulose, which is one of the most abundant resources on our planet,” said Rismani-Yazdi. Indeed, cellulose is plentiful on most farms, as harvesting usually leaves plenty behind in the form of crop residue in fields. Other prime sources of cellulose include waste paper and items made of wood.
08/23/07 - Sleep Invention Puts You To Sleep or Wakes You Up On Time
 Dreamhelmet forms a barrier between you and the outside world, providing a comfy pillow and reducing light and sound; Jim de Cordova, the inventor, calls this low tech triple sensory input reduction 'The shady tree effect.' The Dreamhelmet has received praise from travel professionals and everyday users alike for helping them sleep at home or while traveling. Secret pockets 'HiPockets' hide money and valuables, and contain a free set of foam earplugs. These pockets also hold the secret to the Dreamhelmet's unique ability to awaken its owner at the desired time. Each Dreamhelmet sale now includes a free alarm watch that fits in the pockets. This personal alarm, when placed in one of the pockets, awakens only the user. The full-function fob alarm stopwatch also comes with a carabineer clip and a compass. Dreamhelmet also transforms to a wrap-around earmuff pillow, or into a warm cover for the hands and forearms. Dreamhelmet helps keep automobile drivers safe by making it easy for them to nap along the road, or to stay warmer if stranded. The Dreamhelmet keeps campers' heads warm and safe from mosquitoes. Sport fans can keep hands warm or have a pillow to soften a cold bleacher. The company also has a camouflage military version it hopes will one day be standard equipment for all U.S. soldiers to help them sleep in barracks and field. All information is on the company website: www.dreamhelmet.com 100% cotton cradles the head and a choice of several attractive fabrics grace the outside. The Dreamhelmet costs $29.95 plus shipping. The direct 24 hour order number is (888) 918-5630.
08/23/07 - Video Newspapers
Hollywood needs pricey special effects to make Harry Potter's magical world come to life. But one bit of movie magic, Harry's full-motion-video newspaper, may not be so far from reality. In this ScienCentral News video we see that prototypes of these displays have already been successfully demonstrated in the lab. Purdue University's David Janes is using nanotechnology to create a high-tech display that could be used for a newspaper that updates itself, complete with moving pictures. "So instead of seeing a static picture on your newspaper headline, you would actually see a character talking at you. Certainly I think this would be a way to do that," says Janes. It also happens to be transparent, so manufacturers could be embed it in clear surfaces like windshields, or even your eyeglasses, because everything from the nanowires to the electrodes has been fabricated using transparent oxide materials. If you're sitting on a train or on an airplane, you could just watch videos directly through your eyeglasses, and not have a separate display you carried with you," says Janes. "E Ink" uses electrical signals to rearrange miniscule particles of black and white pigment to create text or images. Like Janes' technology, this E Ink can be applied to a plastic substrate, allowing for super-thin, flexible displays. It is also daylight readable, just like books or newsprint. In the lab, they have developed a video version of the display.
08/23/07 - Bedini Products Website
 Although there is no solution to reconstituting a shorted battery cell, a severely sulfated battery can be "Radiantly" charged back to a near new condition. Conventional chargers cannot break through the sulfated
layers that normally form through conventional charging and discharging cycles. After becoming so sulfated they can no longer be charged, most old batteries are recycled or discarded as worthless. Our innovative new process now makes it possible for you to recover these unchargeable batteries, with replacement costs typically between $60.00 to $6000.00 depending on your battery type. We have recently developed several different charging systems which are unique and available to different market segments for industry and consumers alike. / Products - Daily use of the Genesis Charging System on new batteries will keep them working like new and old batteries will become like new after repeated cycling. This all equates to longer run times and extended battery life. The amazing effects of Radiant charging will result in less energy consumption, less battery recycling and 30% or more available stored power. The above pictures represent a 1000 amp-hour highly sulfated forklift battery, that could not be conventionally charged. In just six cycles we can clearly see that the sulfation has started to break-up and is returning active material to the battery plates. This battery is currently operating at over 50% of its original capacity, and will continue to increase over repeated cycling. Unlike any other charging systems, this battery can now be placed back in service and run a complete eight-hour shift before recharging is necessary. With continued charging and discharging cycling the Radiant charger will slowly break through the sulfated layers until the battery reaches its optimal performance level. / r-charge.com - Someone named Rick kindly provided this URL for actual sales of Bedini products where you can buy them. Click on 'Products'. Thanks Rick! / Low Power Desulfator plans and Lead Acid Battery Desulfation Pulse Generator - DIY plan URLs courtesy of Bill Beaty at Amateur Science.
08/23/07 - Plain soap as effective as antibacterial but without the risk
Antibacterial soaps show no health benefits over plain soaps and, in fact, may render some common antibiotics less effective, says a University of Michigan public health professor. In the first known comprehensive analysis of whether antibacterial soaps work better than plain soaps, Allison Aiello of the U-M School of Public Health and her team found that washing hands with an antibacterial soap was no more effective in preventing infectious illness than plain soap. Moreover, antibacterial soaps at formulations sold to the public do not remove any more bacteria from the hands during washing than plain soaps.
08/23/07 - Nitrogen overload concerns ecologist
On an overcast day in April, Stuart Weiss stood in the rolling hills of a Bay Area nature preserve and lifted a bag of nitrogen-based fertilizer to his shoulder. The heavy sack, the Menlo Park ecologist explained to the small crowd gathered before him, symbolized the unprecedented release of nitrogen into the Earth's air, land and water and the insidious environmental changes the potent fertilizer is causing globally. At Edgewood Park in Redwood City, where he stood, nitrogen in vehicle exhaust from a nearby freeway has led to the local demise of a threatened butterfly population, according to research Weiss conducted. The link he established between the exhaust and the butterflies' decline attracted international attention among the growing federation of scientists studying "nitrogen pollution." "I call it the biggest global change that nobody has ever heard of," Weiss said at the spring event. "The planet has never seen this much nitrogen at any time." Human activity releases 125 million metric tons of nitrogen from agricultural activities and fossil fuel combustion a year, compared with 113 million metric tons annually from natural sources, according to a 2007 United Nations report called "Human Alteration of the Nitrogen Cycle." Not only is the glut of nitrogen disrupting ecosystems, polluting waters and harming human health, but it's also a silent partner with carbon dioxide in changing the Earth's climate, the report said. Despite the countless initiatives under way to reduce carbon-dioxide levels to slow global warming, some scientists warn that those efforts will prove moot unless nitrogen releases also are lowered. "We won't solve global warming without addressing nitrogen," said Elizabeth Holland, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "The changes to the nitrogen cycle are larger in magnitude and more profound than the changes to the carbon cycle," Holland continued. "But the nitrogen cycle is being neglected."
08/23/07 - Pellets of power designed to deliver hydrogen for tomorrow's vehicles
Developing a method to safely store, dispense and easily "refuel" the vehicle's storage material with hydrogen has baffled researchers for years. However, a new and attractive storage medium being developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists may provide the "power of pellets" to fuel future transportation needs. PNNL scientists are using solid ammonia borane, or AB, compressed into small pellets to serve as a hydrogen storage material. Each milliliter of AB weighs about three-quarters of a gram and harbors up to 1.8 liters of hydrogen. Researchers expect that a fuel system using small AB pellets will occupy less space and be lighter in weight than systems using pressurized hydrogen gas, thus enabling fuel cell vehicles to have room, range and performance comparable to today's automobiles. "With this new understanding and our improved methods in working with ammonia borane," said PNNL scientist Dave Heldebrant, "we're making positive strides in developing a viable storage medium to provide reliable, environmentally friendly hydrogen power generation for future transportation needs." A small pellet of solid ammonia borane (240 mg), as shown, is capable of storing relatively large quantities of hydrogen (0.5 liter) in a very small volume. PNNL scientists are learning to manipulate the release of hydrogen from AB at predictable rates. By varying temperature and manipulating AB feed rates to a reactor, researchers envision controlling the production of hydrogen and thus fuel cell power, much like a gas pedal regulates fuel to a car's combustion engine. "Once hydrogen from the storage material is depleted, the AB pellets must be safely and effi ciently regenerated by way of chemical processing," said PNNL scientist Don Camaioni. "This 'refueling' method requires chemically digesting or breaking down the solid spent fuel into chemicals that can be recycled back to AB with hydrogen."
08/23/07 - Caffeine may keep elderly women sharp
 Women who reported drinking heavy amounts of caffeine, did better on the tests on average than those who drank less. Men experienced no visible benefit. From Science News: Although the study's design precluded investigating the possible mechanism for a gender difference, (researcher Karen) Ritchie notes that at least one animal study published by others "suggests there's an interaction between caffeine and the [female] sex hormones estrogen and progesterone." If caffeine's protective effect works by interacting with receptors for estrogen on a women's cells, this might explain another preliminary observation by the French team: that among heavy caffeine consumers, women over age 80 faced half the risk of significant cognitive decline during the study than ladies 65 to 80 did... One disappointing observation, Ritchie notes, is that even heavy caffeine intake didn't reduce the risk of developing outright dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease.
08/23/07 - People buy small cars even though they can be deadly
Americans are buying more small cars to cut fuel costs, and that might kill them. As a group, occupants of small cars are more likely to die in crashes than those in bigger, heavier vehicles are, according to data from the government, the insurance industry and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). If the switch to smaller, lighter vehicles continues to grow, the result could be anywhere from dozens to thousands of traffic deaths that would have been avoided in bigger vehicles, according to fatality records and safety forecasters. The number depends on how many bigger, heavier vehicles ultimately are replaced by smaller, lighter cars.
08/23/07 - Body clock might stop during hibernation
 The body's clock may lose track of time during winter hibernation, scientists have found in a species of hamster. The genes responsible for regulating circadian rhythms in the brain normally follow a 24-hour cycle, with their activity waxing and waning in step with day and night. But what happens during hibernation? Brain activity resembles that of deep slumber, and the body slows its metabolism to a crawl. The internal temperature of arctic ground squirrels, for instance, can plummet below freezing. It's thought that hibernation evolved from sleep as a way to save energy during lean winter months.
Some studies have hinted that factors such as body temperature continue to oscillate up and down in a daily cycle during this winter period, although not nearly so much as during normal conditions. But no one had tapped directly into the brain or looked at the genes that control the body clock to see what was happening there.
08/23/07 - Freecorder Toolbar - Free Sound Recorder
Freecorder Toolbar is a revolutionary new browser-based audio recording program, combining state of the art recording technology, ease-of-use, and some great browser enhancements. And best of all, it's 100% FREE! Here's some of the benefits of Freecorder Toolbar: * Records what you hear from your PC's speakers. * Records from the microphone or line-in inputs on your PC. * Unique Sound Separation Technology eliminates background noises. * Easy-to-use Record, Stop and Pause functions. * See recordings happening with the cool Visualizer. * Saves recordings as MP3 or WAV files.
08/21/07 - Swiss and Spanish Solar Hydrogen Agreement
 A CHP solar concentrator and furnace unit. The furnace is at the end of the arm. Clean Hydrogen Producers (CHP), an early stage company based in Switzerland, has signed an agreement with Grupo Ibereólica, a multi-national alternative energy company based in Madrid, Spain, outlining the planning, permitting and appraisal of CHP’s Solar Water Cracker technology in Spain and Mexico. The CHP Solar Water Cracker is a system which concentrates sunlight to heat a furnace to the point where it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be sold or run through a fuel cell to generate energy. This energy can then be sold back to the grid.
08/21/07 - Inventor's 'kool' idea
"I don't know if you remember computers back then, but the computers ran pretty hot," says Marceau, who is provost of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa. So he set about cutting up a piece of glass to use as a plate on which to place his computer. Over the next six years he would update the design, change the materials, and experiment with his invention -- though at that time he didn't know he even had an invention on his hands. In 2001, a work friend bought a laptop and Marceau found himself telling his colleague about the plate. "When I said it, it struck me that I had an invention. It took me six years to realize somebody else might be interested in this thing," Marceau says.
The invention -- called the Koolplate -- just received a U.S. patent, after Marceau applied for one in 2003. Made of aluminum and 50 mm thick, the Koolplate is designed to protect laptop users if a desk or table isn't available. The aluminum helps shield computer users from electromagnetic radiation emitted by some laptops, he says. The invention is useful for commuters who use their computers on the bus or train, Marceau says. Six students from the school's bachelor of commerce program made the Koolplate their fourth-year project this year, with a focus on getting it to market. The Koolplate could be available around September, at $30 to $35, Marceau says.
08/21/07 - A Human Anti-Aging Pill in Ten Years
 Sinclair's basic claim is simple, if seemingly improbable: he has found an elixir of youth. In his Australian drawl, the 38-year-old Harvard University professor of pathology explains how he discovered that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, extends life span in mice by up to 24 percent and in other animals, including flies and worms, by as much as 59 percent. Sinclair hopes that resveratrol will bump up the life span of people, too. "The system at work in the mice and other organisms is evolutionarily very old, so I suspect that what works in mice will work in humans," he says. While Sinclair was in Guarente's lab in the late 1990s, he discovered that sir2 prevents aging in yeast by slowing down the accumulation of ERCs, circular strands of DNA that build up in organisms as they age, eventually killing them. Around the same time, others in Guarente's lab made another crucial discovery: that a link may exist between sir2 and a molecule critical for metabolizing food, called NAD. The connection suggested that the longevity gene might be related to diet--specifically, Guarente postulated, to caloric restriction. A nutritionally complete diet containing 30 to 40 percent fewer calories than normal had long been known to extend life span in some animals, ramping up cell defenses and slowing down aging. A study in Cell from the lab of Johan Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. Auwerx's team, which was partially funded by Sirtris (Auwerx is on the company's scientific advisory board), had given mice even higher doses of resveratrol--400 milligrams per kilogram. These mice stayed slender and strong on a high-fat diet, with the energy-charged muscles and reduced heart rate of athletes. The number of mitochondria in their cells increased, which improved the cells' energy output.
08/21/07 - Get Eight Watch Batteries From a 12-Volt Battery
 Do-it-yourselfer Kipkay did a little investigating and found that beneath the shell of a run-of-the-mill 12-volt battery was eight watch batteries. Considering watch batteries cost between $4 and $6 a pop, finding eight of them in a $2 battery makes for quite a savings. I guess this isn't surprising since 9-volt batteries are filled with six AAA batteries.
08/21/07 - A Step in the Right Direction
Medicare will stop paying the costs of treating infections, falls, objects left in surgical patients and other things that happen in hospitals that could have been prevented. The rule identifies eight conditions - including three serious types of preventable incidents sometimes called ``never events'' - that Medicare no longer will pay for. Those conditions are: objects left in a patient during surgery; blood incompatibility; air embolism; falls; mediastinitis, which is an infection after heart surgery; urinary tract infections from using catheters; pressure ulcers, or bed sores; and vascular infections from using catheters. ``Our efforts in this arena and in other payment rules are to ensure that CMS is an active puchaser, not passive payer, of health care,'' Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the agency, said Saturday. He said the rule ``underscores our drive toward quality, efficiency and integrity in the hospital setting.'' Hospitals in the future will be expected to pick up the cost of additional treatment required by a preventable condition acquired in the hospital. ``The hospital cannot bill the beneficiary for any charges associated with the hospital-acquired complication,'' the final rules say. Medicare provides coverage for about 43 million elderly and disabled people. The Medicare program's expenses totaled about $408 billion in 2006; costs are expected to rise rapidly in coming years.
08/21/07 - Plastic Car Will be World’s Cheapest
 The car maker Tata Motors has not divulged many details about the car other than its shockingly low sticker price of 100,000 rupees, or 1 lakh in Indian currency. That's just over £1200, less than half the price of the lowest-priced cars on India's market today. Supposedly, the 1 Lakh Car - Tata has yet to release its official name - will be a 4-door as big as a Volkswagen Rabbit, much of it will be plastic, and it will have a rear-mounted 30-horsepower engine. By comparison, a Rabbit has about 150 horsepower. Tata is counting on it being a mega hit. It better be, analysts say. A huge volume of sales is necessary to make up for the car's tiny profit margin of less than 3%. But its success could spell trouble for India's urban planners and environmentalists who say a drastic increase in car ownership could overwhelm the country's already crowded roadways and worsen its air quality.
08/21/07 - Let the Sun Shine In
Too much energy is wasted by converting it. We could cut energy use by as much as 30% in 10 years by removing some links from the energy chain. Even the most advanced photovoltaic solar panels convert just 20% of the available sunlight to electricity. The resulting direct current (DC) then must undergo conversion to alternating current (AC), losing another 20%. If that AC goes on to light an incandescent bulb, which is only 5% efficient, you end up using a fraction of 1% of the original sunlight as room light. (Even switching to compact florescent bulbs, which are 15% efficient, makes little difference in overall energy efficiency.) But if you were to simply leave sunlight as light-via proper skylights, window orientation, and louvers-nearly 80% of the light ends up as illumination. The more links we put in the energy conversion chain, the greater the losses and the more improbable and inappropriate the solution. We need, wherever possible, to keep light as light and heat as heat and food as food. And as much as we enjoy endlessly debating which approach to take, the best solutions may very well be those closest to home. We could begin by siting new buildings for optimal exposure to sunlight and properly designing them to best capture daylight via skylights and windows. Though still a rarity in the U.S., such design practice has become much more common in Europe. With proper insulation, such structures also require very little energy to heat. Similarly, we could install heat exchangers-simple, low tech devices that operate with 90% efficiency-much more widely. Office building architects, for example, increasingly use heat exchangers to help separate sources of heat and cold, thus eliminating double heating and cooling. Even if you can't avoid mulitiple conversions entirely, there are ways to minimize the number of conversions. For example, we could also find more opportunities to break the DC/AC conversion cycle. Refrigerators and other appliances that operate on DC are becoming available and, with the certain arrival of economical LED lighting, which operates on DC, direct DC solar-power-to-DC-end-use shortly will become much more practical.
08/21/07 - Video - Turn a pencil into an emergency light source
 A pencil lead and a connection source is all you need, and voila! Emergency light source. It's an excellent option if you've ever been stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire and you don't have your handy dandy emergency car kit packed. (via lifehacker.com)
08/21/07 - 3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls
 Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities.
08/21/07 - The greening of IT: Why less is more
A day doesn't go by without another software, hardware or electronics firms professing its newly found green credentials. Not only can this be misleading, it distracts us from what we really need to do so save our fragile earth: consume less, reuse more. The problem with the greening of IT is that - admittedly this is a generalisation - the underlying goal is to get you to buy more: new servers with more energy-efficient processors, intelligent sensors for data centre coolant systems, server virtualisation software, low-power monitors, tools that turn off dormant computers and so on. Do more to impact less. In 2006 Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote: "If the biosphere is wrecked, it will not be done by those who couldn't give a damn about it, as they now belong to a diminishing minority. It will be destroyed by nice, well-meaning, cosmopolitan people who accept the case for cutting emissions but who won't change by one iota the way they live."
08/21/07 - Max Water Cranks Moisture Out of the Air
 Inventor Max Whisson has figured out a way to extract water from air using Max Water, a wind-powered contraption he named after himself. Max Water uses the concept of condensation, where lower temperature allows less water to hang around in the air, and Whisson says that will amount to 10,000 liters per day dripping from this single rooftop device. Man, that's a lot of water. Those interested in this device better be mighty thirsty, though, because they'll have to shell out $43,000 for one of these babies. But if you've ever been in a region where there's no water, spending $43K is a whole lot better than dying of thirst. If this idea really works as well as its inventor says it does, economies of scale will make that high price a temporary hurdle.
08/21/07 - Deflector Shields to Maximum
A microwave-generated plasma shield was patented today under the name "Pseudo surface microwave produced plasma shielding system." The shielding system might be usable "as a stealth system from RADAR and SONAR, a protection system from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and a weapon system to generate and launch plasmoids as a plasma gun," as well as a type of propulsion system, and as an alternative heating method to the "conventional combustion method that uses petroleum based fuel in the combustion chamber of an engine."
08/21/07 - Reagan Writes About George W.
 (Even Reagan realized it!!! - JWD) From the new Reagan Diaries. President Reagan writes about an encounter with soon-to-be president George H.W. Bush: Find the kid a job. - May 17, 1986. 'A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.'
08/21/07 - Body Heat Used to Power Electronics
 It used to be that human-generated electricity meant riding a stationary bicycle, or some such thing, to power a generator. But couch potatoes take note: simply sitting around could one day generate enough electricity to power electronic devices. Spies and his team improved upon semiconductors called thermoelectric generators that produce electrical energy in the face of temperature differences. Normally, a difference of several tens of degrees would be required in order to generate enough power, but the differences between the body's surface temperature and that of its environment are only a few degrees. That produces about 250 millivolts, while electronic devices require at least one or two volts. Spies and his team devised a solution. They incorporated a component into the circuit called a charge pump. The pump temporarily stores the incoming millivolts until they reach 1.8 volts. At that threshold, an internal transistor turns on and delivers the higher voltage to a component that can transfer the electricity to a device. "Only a very small part of the thermal heat flow can be converted into electrical power," said Ueltzen. And for that reason, the technology may only work for applications that don't require a lot of energy. The technology has already been shown to work on a wireless sensor that could be used to constantly monitor a patient's temperature and send the information to a nurse's station. It could also be used to power a hearing aid or to supplement the battery power on larger electronic devices, such as a sports watch or a mobile phone. And because the circuit essentially converts waste heat into energy, it could have applications outside the body. For example, it could be used to convert the heat from radiators, refrigerators, or air conditioning systems into energy that can be reused by a building. Spies and his team plan to have an optimized prototype by the end of the this year and think they can get the 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch device down to 1/5 inch on its side.
08/21/07 - Can a jet fly on pond scum? New Zealanders think so
It seems as if you can make an eco-friendly fuel out of just about any organic matter: corn, table wine, and, now, algae. According to a report out of New Zealand, Boeing, Air New Zealand and biofuel developer Aquaflow Bionomic are at work on a secret project: to make an organic fuel out of wild algae extracted from sewage ponds and other fetid watering holes.
08/21/07 - Scientists hail ‘frozen smoke’ as material that will change world
 Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C. Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars. Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil. Mark Krajewski, a senior scientist at the company, believes that an 18mm layer of aerogel will be sufficient to protect astronauts from temperatures as low as -130C. “It is the greatest insulator we’ve ever seen,” he said. Aerogel is also being tested for future bombproof housing and armour for military vehicles. In the laboratory, a metal plate coated in 6mm of aerogel was left almost unscathed by a direct dynamite blast. It also has green credentials. Aerogel is described by scientists as the “ultimate sponge”, with millions of tiny pores on its surface making it ideal for absorbing pollutants in water. Kanatzidis has created a new version of aerogel designed to mop up lead and mercury from water. Other versions are designed to absorb oil spills. Dunlop, the sports equipment company, has developed a range of squash and tennis rackets strengthened with aerogel, which are said to deliver more power. Mountain climbers are also converts. Last year Anne Parmenter, a British mountaineer, climbed Everest using boots that had aerogel insoles, as well as sleeping bags padded with the material. She said at the time: “The only problem I had was that my feet were too hot, which is a great problem to have as a mountaineer.” However, it has failed to convince the fashion world. Hugo Boss created a line of winter jackets out of the material but had to withdraw them after complaints that they were too hot. Although aerogel is classed as a solid, 99% of the substance is made up of gas, which gives it a cloudy appearance. Scientists say that because it has so many millions of pores and ridges, if one cubic centimetre of aerogel were unravelled it would fill an area the size of a football field. Its nano-sized pores can not only collect pollutants like a sponge but they also act as air pockets. Researchers believe that some versions of aerogel which are made from platinum can be used to speed up the production of hydrogen. As a result, aerogel can be used to make hydrogen-based fuels.
08/21/07 - Turning garbage to energy has downsides, critics say
Drastically reducing the amount of garbage going to landfills while creating a clean energy source in the process - it sounds like the perfect solution to the world's environmental woes. But critics argue that the process of heating garbage to create a gas that can then be used to produce heat and electricity - a process known as garbage gasification - is an unsustainable solution to the problem of overflowing landfills that will ultimately cause more harm than good to the environment and human health. "We have to remember that incinerators and gasifiers don't destroy the elements that go in, all they do is recombine them in new ways, some of which are more hazardous than what was going in in the first place." Garbage gasification is a two-step process. First, solid waste is heated anaerobically, or without oxygen, to extract a synthetic gas. That gas is then burned to produce heat or electricity that can be added to a city's regular grid. The byproducts include ash and, depending on the plant's emission controls, greenhouse gases and other particles that can be hazardous to human health. Paul Connett, a retired professor of chemistry with St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., says gasification is no different from incineration, and anyone who believes otherwise is being "hoodwinked." "Basically what you're doing is destroying materials that we should be sharing with the future. We buy things today, we destroy them tomorrow. That's a non-sustainable way of living on a finite planet." In addition to greenhouse gases, gasification creates what Connett calls "toxic nano-particles" which, when inhaled by humans, can cause degenerative diseases that affect tissues, including the brain. "When you incinerate, you're converting tons and tons of material into trillions of tiny particles, and those tiny particles by definition contain every toxic element that we use in commerce," he said. But despite critics' warnings, the technology seems to be growing in popularity, and two major Canadian cities are moving ahead with projects to convert their garbage to energy.
08/19/07 - Hoax - August 27th - ONCE IN OUR LIFETIME...
 There's a rumor about Mars going around the internet. Here are some snippets from a widely-circulated email message: 27th Aug the Whole World is waiting! Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again. / Only the first sentence is true. The Red Planet is about to be spectacular. The rest is a hoax. Here are the facts: Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter this year on October 30th at 0319 Universal Time. Distance: 69 million kilometers. To the unaided eye, Mars will look like a bright red star, a pinprick of light, certainly not as wide as the full Moon. Disappointed? Don't be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides.
08/19/07 - New Stirling Engine Insights
 The Air Engine Stirling Cycle Power for a Sustainable Future Contains Previously Unpublished Insights into the Pressure Wave and Thermal Lag Engines. Research and Markets has announced the addition of “The Air Engine: Stirling Cycle Power For A Sustainable Future” to their offering. The air engine: Stirling cycle power for a sustainable future - * Contains previously unpublished insights into the pressure-wave and thermal-lag engines * Addresses the need to reduce harmful gas emissions whilst sustaining economic growth * Design implications are discussed. Two centuries after the original invention, the Stirling engine is now a commercial reality as the core component of domestic CHP (combined heat and power) - a technology offering substantial savings in raw energy utilization relative to centralized power generation. The threat of climate change requires a net reduction in hydrocarbon consumption and in emissions of 'greenhouse' gases whilst sustaining economic growth. Development of technologies such as CHP addresses both these needs. Meeting the challenge involves addressing a range of issues: a long-standing mismatch between inherently favourable internal efficiency and wasteful external heating provision; a dearth of heat transfer and flow data appropriate to the task of first-principles design; the limited rpm capability when operating with air (and nitrogen) as working fluid. All of these matters are explored in depth in The air engine: Stirling cycle power for a sustainable future. The account includes previously unpublished insights into the personality and potential of two related regenerative prime movers - the pressure-wave and thermal-lag engines.
08/19/07 - Ionic Wind to cool hot computer chips
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