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Archive Index

1 - 08/31/11 - DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k
2 - 08/31/11 - Developing Nuclear Power Plant Tech For the Moon and Mars
3 - 08/31/11 - Science Forum - Ether Wind Theory (Jan, 1934)
4 - 08/31/11 - NHS diabetic device will text for help if wearer is in danger
5 - 08/31/11 - Robot rubbish recycler
6 - 08/31/11 - Evaluating Homeland Security
7 - 08/31/11 - New Way To Dispose Of Dead Bodies
8 - 08/31/11 - Giant lasers fired into the sky could be used to create rainfall
9 - 08/31/11 - PodPonics – shipping containers as miniature hydroponic farms
10 - 08/31/11 - Anti-Heroin Vaccine to Appear Soon
11 - 08/31/11 - Fight quackery! 1950s FDA public service announcement
12 - 08/31/11 - WIPO assigns patent for 'Geothermal Power Generation Apparatus'
13 - 08/31/11 - SignalGuru Helps Drivers Avoid Red Lights
14 - 08/31/11 - The Quest For an EV Fast-Charge Standard
15 - 08/31/11 - Joining Blood Vessels Without Sutures
16 - 08/31/11 - Gut Bacteria Exert Mind Control
17 - 08/31/11 - Crowdsourcing Makes an API For Human Intelligence
18 - 08/31/11 - New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage
19 - 08/31/11 - Making Fuel With Newspapers and Bacteria
20 - 08/31/11 - Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel Using Sunlight
21 - 08/31/11 - Localizing Language In the Brain
22 - 08/31/11 - Chinese Want To Capture an Asteroid
23 - 08/31/11 - Will Climate Engineering Ever Go Prime Time?
24 - 08/31/11 - Chemical Cocktail Turns Mice Clear
25 - 08/31/11 - Generating Text From Functional Brain Images
26 - 08/29/11 - 2 Hospitalized in Hydrogen Blast at Sylmar Energy Company
27 - 08/29/11 - Sylmar Explosion casts shadow over Alt Science experimenters
28 - 08/29/11 - First-ever images of an electron in orbit
29 - 08/29/11 - LiFi is coming
30 - 08/29/11 - 21 Research Projects That Could Change The World
31 - 08/29/11 - Climate Change: Scientists can now control the weather
32 - 08/29/11 - Drug implant that can develop a healthy, 90-day tan
33 - 08/29/11 - Paper Pellets
34 - 08/29/11 - FBI deploys fingerprint system for mobile devices
35 - 08/29/11 - xplanes
36 - 08/29/11 - Price of a hospital circumcision in the US: $23,000
37 - 08/29/11 - Battle for CA desert: Why is government driving folks off their land?
38 - 08/29/11 - "Kno" your Textbooks
39 - 08/29/11 - Sun Power (Jun, 1935)
40 - 08/29/11 - Adrenaline May Damage DNA
41 - 08/29/11 - Theoretical Shoe Inserts Could Power Your Gadgets
42 - 08/29/11 - Low-Cost DIY Cell Network Runs On Solar
43 - 08/29/11 - Russian Resupply Crash Could Mean Leaving ISS Empty
44 - 08/29/11 - Book Scanner
45 - 08/29/11 - Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police
46 - 08/26/11 - Guarding property
47 - 08/26/11 - The Art of Selling Invention Ideas
48 - 08/26/11 - Experiments Show Gravity Is Not an Emergent Phenomenon
49 - 08/26/11 - How acupuncture works
50 - 08/26/11 - Fluid that 'magically' rebuilds teeth could obsolete dentist's drill
51 - 08/26/11 - Build your own 84 kV lightning stick
52 - 08/26/11 - Hack: Powerline device takeover
53 - 08/26/11 - 1972 Electric Datsun - 0 to 60mph in 1.8 seconds World's Fastest
54 - 08/26/11 - Scientist creating artificial life that feeds off carbon dioxide
55 - 08/26/11 - 3-D Design Simplified
56 - 08/26/11 - Get Someone Else to Pay For Your Ventures
57 - 08/26/11 - Quenching the thirst for purified water
58 - 08/26/11 - The Difference Between Invention And Innovation
59 - 08/26/11 - Bisexual men really do exist, say scientists
60 - 08/26/11 - $9K worth of stolen camera gear returned using GadgetTrak
61 - 08/26/11 - Clam’s Shell Gives Health Rays (May, 1931)
62 - 08/26/11 - Evangelical Scientists Debate Creation Story
63 - 08/26/11 - MK-1 Robotic Arm Capable of Near-Human Dexterity and Disco Dancing
64 - 08/26/11 - Does Religion Influence Epidemics?
65 - 08/26/11 - Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware
66 - 08/26/11 - Russian Supply Vehicle To ISS Burns
67 - 08/26/11 - When Algorithms Control the World
68 - 08/26/11 - NASA Creating Laser Communication System For Mars
69 - 08/26/11 - When Airsoft gets boring, build a coil gun!
70 - 08/26/11 - Entrepreneur Makes Millions Selling Virtual Land
71 - 08/26/11 - SEC Hit With Data Destruction Complaint
72 - 08/23/11 - Researcher misses fund-raising goal for Clean Energy Summit booth
73 - 08/23/11 - Bingaman to review energy bills for Reid’s jobs agenda
74 - 08/23/11 - Tesla, Chicago, and the War of the Currents
75 - 08/23/11 - Fukushima grows sunflowers to clean up radiation contamination
76 - 08/23/11 - High Voltage Hacks: shrinking coins
77 - 08/23/11 - A centre for eco-friendly R&D
78 - 08/23/11 - Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear
79 - 08/23/11 - When Oil And Gas Are Depleted
80 - 08/23/11 - Why Do Malthusians Ignore The Sun?
81 - 08/23/11 - Hydroelectricity Without Turbines or Dams?
82 - 08/23/11 - Capitalism vs Socialism
83 - 08/23/11 - IBM Chief: All CEOs Reluctant To Invest In R&D
84 - 08/23/11 - The true nature of batteries
85 - 08/23/11 - Nano Solar Cells could kill cancer cells
86 - 08/23/11 - Sunvalley Solar Files Patent
87 - 08/23/11 - No fossil fuel Energy Generator invention
88 - 08/23/11 - How paid FBI anti-terror informants lead “terrorist attacks” that FBI foils
89 - 08/23/11 - New Mexico Spaceport Nearly Ready For Business
90 - 08/23/11 - Most People Have Never Heard of CTRL+F
91 - 08/23/11 - DIY Hand-Mounted Sonar For the Blind
92 - 08/23/11 - Web Surfing At Work Can Boost Productivity
93 - 08/23/11 - When Schools Are the Police
94 - 08/23/11 - After Rick Perry's Stem Cell Treatment, Misplaced Enthusiasm?
95 - 08/23/11 - Even if its not true, its Priceless!
96 - 08/23/11 - Solar panel 'trees' are in fact inferior
97 - 08/20/11 - 13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough
98 - 08/20/11 - The dark side of solar and wind power projects
99 - 08/20/11 - Sooner, Not Later: Interstellar Voyages a Reality?
100 - 08/20/11 - Carbon Recycling: Mining the Air for Fuel
101 - 08/20/11 - Do You Want to Live Forever?
102 - 08/20/11 - The Balancing Act for Life
103 - 08/20/11 - Boomers Will Be Pumping Billions Into Anti-Aging Industry
104 - 08/20/11 - Short Sleep During Daytime Promotes Learning
105 - 08/20/11 - Flaxseed might protect against death from radiation
106 - 08/20/11 - 4,000 mph underwater trans-atlantic train
107 - 08/20/11 - 83% of American adults own cell phones
108 - 08/20/11 - Possibility of Temporarily Reversing Aging in the Immune System
109 - 08/20/11 - CNY man’s invention makes mowing the lawn hassle free
110 - 08/20/11 - Con man asks Rhode Island to help him appeal conviction
111 - 08/20/11 - An Apollo astronaut on political quagmires
112 - 08/20/11 - Drug found to rejuvenate the 'power plant' of your cells to youthful levels
113 - 08/20/11 - UCLA Engineers Create Energy-Generating LCD Screen
114 - 08/20/11 - Company Wants You to Visit Near-Space In Their "Bloon"
115 - 08/20/11 - DARPA To Sponsor R&D For Interstellar Travel
116 - 08/20/11 - Computer Prediction Used to Design Better Organic Semiconductors
117 - 08/20/11 - DHS Tries To Hide Mobile Scanner Details
118 - 08/20/11 - What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind?
119 - 08/20/11 - RKK Energia Confirms Private Trip To the Moon
120 - 08/20/11 - Canadian Library to Loan Out People
121 - 08/20/11 - The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars
122 - 08/20/11 - American Grant Writing: Race Matters
123 - 08/20/11 - Sun May Disrupt Spacecraft and Satellites In Coming Decades
124 - 08/20/11 - Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests
125 - 08/20/11 - Study Shows Dogs Can Sniff Out Lung Cancer
126 - 08/20/11 - Rare Earth Restrictions To Raise Hard Drive Cost
127 - 08/17/11 - Cutting Edge Tech Slated For Next Mars Rover
128 - 08/17/11 - List of inventors killed by their own inventions
129 - 08/17/11 - Paul Krugman: save the economy by staging an alien invasion hoax
130 - 08/17/11 - On the Effectiveness of CCTVs & Terrorism Paranoia
131 - 08/17/11 - Should you use public cell-phone charging kiosks?
132 - 08/17/11 - Backing up to a Hard Drive
133 - 08/17/11 - The Death of Booting Up
134 - 08/17/11 - Which Company Is the Largest?
135 - 08/17/11 - Mussels With Hydrogen Fuel Cells Found
136 - 08/17/11 - Essex Police Arrest Man Over Blackberry Water Fight Plan
137 - 08/17/11 - Cop Seeks Wiretapping Charges For Woman Who Videotaped Beating
138 - 08/17/11 - The Post-Idea World
139 - 08/17/11 - Yahoo, Facebook Test "Six Degrees of Separation"
140 - 08/17/11 - 1 in 8 Take Fake Phone Calls to Avoid Talking to Others
141 - 08/17/11 - Floating Nuclear Power Plant Seized By Court
142 - 08/17/11 - Paypal Founder Helping Build Artificial Island Nations
143 - 08/17/11 - Santa Cruz Tests Predictive Policing Program
144 - 08/17/11 - Australian 'Electronic Pigeon Hole' Could Replace Gov't Snail Mail
145 - 08/17/11 - USPTO Issues 8,000,000th Patent
146 - 08/17/11 - How To Steal ATM PINs With a Thermal Camera
147 - 08/17/11 - NASA Shoots Down Comet Elenin Doomsday Predictions
148 - 08/17/11 - MABEL Robot Runs Like a Human
149 - 08/17/11 - Malicious Spam Spikes To 'Epic' Level
150 - 08/14/11 - A Ferrofluid-Based Free Energy Device to Experiment with
151 - 08/14/11 - 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars
152 - 08/14/11 - Andrea Rossi's E-Cataclysm?
153 - 08/14/11 - Shinji Saito, World YoYo Champion
154 - 08/14/11 - CERN Physicist Says Dark Matter May Be an Illusion
155 - 08/14/11 - Boost your garden’s output using ultrasonic mist
156 - 08/14/11 - 54.5 MPG Standard by 2025: Here Are Ten Ways to Improve Mileage
157 - 08/14/11 - Edison's Anti-Gravity Underwear and Other Wonders
158 - 08/14/11 - Could Seawater Solve the Freshwater Crisis?
159 - 08/14/11 - Cree demo LED bulb turns up dial on efficiency
160 - 08/14/11 - Deep Brain stimulation to 'cure' sexual Orientation
161 - 08/14/11 - Corrugate Plating deflects Armor-Piercing Bullets - July, 1936
162 - 08/14/11 - Money and Politics
163 - 08/14/11 - First functional anal sphincters made in the laboratory
164 - 08/14/11 - Britain falls victim to its own cult of absurd tolerance
165 - 08/14/11 - PC Designer Says PC "Going the Way of the Vacuum Tube"
166 - 08/14/11 - Cancer Cured By HIV
167 - 08/14/11 - DARPA Loses Contact With Hypersonic Glider
168 - 08/14/11 - Human Brain Is Sensitive To Light In Ears
169 - 08/14/11 - US Energy Panel Cautiously Endorses Fracking
170 - 08/14/11 - Researchers Make Graphene From Girl Scout Cookies
171 - 08/14/11 - Why Companies Knowingly Ship Insecure Devices
172 - 08/14/11 - Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk
173 - 08/14/11 - 'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body
174 - 08/14/11 - Jeff Bezos Wants To Put an Airbag In Your iPhone
175 - 08/14/11 - BART Disables Cell Service To Disrupt Protests
176 - 08/14/11 - Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use
177 - 08/14/11 - Canadian Judge Rules Domain Names Are Property
178 - 08/14/11 - US Pumps $175M Into Advanced Auto Fuel Research
179 - 08/11/11 - Keep your Mouth Shut? - Open Science Summit 2011
180 - 08/11/11 - Invention Scams
181 - 08/11/11 - Energy Storage for Solar Power
182 - 08/11/11 - Man Claims Invention Company Misled Him w/video
183 - 08/11/11 - The Amazing Motor That Draws Power From the Air (Apr, 1971)
184 - 08/11/11 - Micro homes and micro apartments for struggling cities
185 - 08/11/11 - Roseanne: God Is Telling Me To Run For President
186 - 08/11/11 - Feel the hum of electricity between your legs
187 - 08/11/11 - Little Exercise, Big Effects
188 - 08/11/11 - 6 Ancient Things That Were Probably Built By Aliens
189 - 08/11/11 - Venture Capitalists Back Away from Clean Energy
190 - 08/11/11 - Antioxidants And Reality
191 - 08/11/11 - Bad economy may be mother of invention
192 - 08/11/11 - Peripheral Disclosure
193 - 08/11/11 - Gravity Glue
194 - 08/11/11 - Degenerates
195 - 08/11/11 - Power Companies Brace For Solar Storms
196 - 08/11/11 - Start-Up Claims Immortality For Data With 'Stone-Like' Disc
197 - 08/11/11 - Technology Blamed For Helping UK Rioters
198 - 08/11/11 - Patent Troll Lawyer Sanctioned Over Extortion Tactics
199 - 08/11/11 - Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook
200 - 08/11/11 - New USB Specification Promises 100W of Power
201 - 08/11/11 - Taxonomy of technological risks: when things fail badly
202 - 08/11/11 - Why The US Will Lose a Cyber War
203 - 08/11/11 - Court Rules Sending Too Many Emails Is "Hacking"
204 - 08/11/11 - New Type of e-Paper Can Be Used Up To 260 Times
205 - 08/11/11 - Bruce Schneier’s Telepathic Takeover of the TSA
206 - 08/11/11 - Apple Now Offering Free Recycling For PCs
207 - 08/11/11 - New Drug Could Cure Nearly Any Viral Infection
208 - 08/11/11 - Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil
209 - 08/11/11 - Military Working On Laser Powered Drones
210 - 08/11/11 - Gollum, bearer of the ring
211 - 08/11/11 - Terrorist Target Mexican Nanotechnology Professors
212 - 08/08/11 - Shielding magnetic fields with Metamaterials (will lead to free energy)
213 - 08/08/11 - Cold Fusion inventor terminates deal with Defkalion Green Technologies
214 - 08/08/11 - Anti-Heroin Vaccine to Appear Soon
215 - 08/08/11 - Acoustic trauma: How wind farms make you sick
216 - 08/08/11 - European network of Stone Age tunnels going from Scotland to Turkey
217 - 08/08/11 - Who knew Thinkpad batteries require a jump start?
218 - 08/08/11 - Security expert can unlock 1,000s of cars by sending a text message
219 - 08/08/11 - 'Credit card' tells if you have HIV within minutes and costs just $1
220 - 08/08/11 - Russian Surgeons Performed Successful Lung Transplantation
221 - 08/08/11 - Spray-on radiator cuts heating/cooling bills by 35%
222 - 08/08/11 - The Single NPN Transistor Audio Preamp
223 - 08/08/11 - 12,000 square mile coverage with WRAN WIFI
224 - 08/08/11 - Blow your mind with the Brainwave Disruptor
225 - 08/08/11 - Mapping and Tracking Disasters in realtime
226 - 08/08/11 - LIQUID AIR to RECLAIM LAND from NORTH SEA (May, 1931)
227 - 08/08/11 - Getting a 2nd Opinion on the Cheap
228 - 08/08/11 - Internet Eats Into Time-Warner Cable Porn Profits
229 - 08/08/11 - DOE Announces Philips As L Prize Winner
230 - 08/08/11 - Saving Gas Via Underpowered Death Traps
231 - 08/08/11 - In German Trials, Airport Body Scanners Easily Confused
232 - 08/08/11 - Google's Self Driving Car Crashes with Human at helm
233 - 08/08/11 - ISPs Will Now Be Copyright Cops
234 - 08/08/11 - L.A. Artist Contemplates Future Traffic Flow, With Hot Wheels
235 - 08/08/11 - DARPA Commits To Funding Useful Hacking Projects
236 - 08/08/11 - Liver Regeneration Drug Developed
237 - 08/08/11 - Computers Could Grade Essay Tests Better Than Profs
238 - 08/08/11 - Army Gives Robo Jeeps a Go
239 - 08/08/11 - Anti-Matter Belt Discovered Around Earth
240 - 08/08/11 - Making Microelectronics Out of Nanodiamond
241 - 08/08/11 - Old-timey German nose-error-correcting contraption
242 - 08/05/11 - Use Your Car To Power Your House
243 - 08/05/11 - Handheld magnetrons for making crop circles?
244 - 08/05/11 - Invention combats mindless eating
245 - 08/05/11 - Inventor Aviso claims better use for P450-million fuel subsidy
246 - 08/05/11 - Quirky: The Solution to the Innovator's Dilemma
247 - 08/05/11 - Energy Independence for the United States -- How?
248 - 08/05/11 - Simple Device That Creates Energy from Ambient Heat
249 - 08/05/11 - Toyota Seeks Battery That Stores More Energy than Gasoline
250 - 08/05/11 - Radio show zeroes in on patent trolls
251 - 08/05/11 - Could Finnish invention hold key to CO2 reduction?
252 - 08/05/11 - Gates Foundation Spearheads Revolutionary Toilet Invention
253 - 08/05/11 - Create your invention at TechShop
254 - 08/05/11 - Paper-thin computers can be rolled up, stuffed in a pocket
255 - 08/05/11 - Claims correlating IQ with browser choice was a hoax
256 - 08/05/11 - Volunteer Towns Sought For Nuclear Waste
257 - 08/05/11 - Invention makes water from moisture in the air
258 - 08/05/11 - NASA's Plan To Clean Up Space Program Launch Site Contamination
259 - 08/05/11 - Ground-Based GPS Mimic Is Inch Perfect
260 - 08/05/11 - Making Graphics In Games '100,000 Times' Better?
261 - 08/05/11 - 800Mbps Wireless Network Made With LED Light Bulbs
262 - 08/05/11 - Escaping Infinite Loops
263 - 08/05/11 - Amazon App Store 'Rotten To the Core,' Says Dev
264 - 08/05/11 - Limits On Growth of Energy Use and Economies
265 - 08/05/11 - Earth May Once Have Had Two Moons
266 - 08/05/11 - Monitor Household Energy From Your Smartphone
267 - 08/05/11 - Building Material Absorbs and Releases Heat
268 - 08/05/11 - Smart Power Grid Could Wreak Havoc On Itself
269 - 08/05/11 - New Chip Can Identify Liquids, Encode Messages
270 - 08/05/11 - Online Parody Cartoon Targeted For Prosecution
271 - 08/01/11 - Dr. Brian O'Leary passed away July 29 , 2011
272 - 08/01/11 - Transmutation of Aluminum to Magnesium?
273 - 08/01/11 - Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex
274 - 08/01/11 - Technology is the new smoking
275 - 08/01/11 - Fibonacci Sequence animated in mesmerizing video
276 - 08/01/11 - New Material Lets Electrons 'Dance' and Form New State
277 - 08/01/11 - The End of Publishing
278 - 08/01/11 - We're sitting ourselves to death
279 - 08/01/11 - Do you have a suggestion for IDEAFEED?
280 - 08/01/11 - Communicating through earth with Magnetic fields
281 - 08/01/11 - Fight Brewing Over Off-Grid Energy Storage, Says Lux
282 - 08/01/11 - Wealthy Families Back $1.4 Billion Cleantech Fund
283 - 08/01/11 - Nano-Structured Metals
284 - 08/01/11 - What are 'Green Jobs'?
285 - 08/01/11 - Is Islam Compatible with Capitalism?
286 - 08/01/11 - GE 13watt LED bright as a 60W bulb
287 - 08/01/11 - Qatar Solar Generator
288 - 08/01/11 - New Products Hasten Return of PROSPERITY (Feb, 1933)
289 - 08/01/11 - Hackers' Flying Drone Now Eavesdrops On GSM Phones
290 - 08/01/11 - The End of the Gas Guzzler
291 - 08/01/11 - Microsoft Exposes Locations of PCs and Phones
292 - 08/01/11 - MIT Unveils Sun-Free Photovoltaics
293 - 08/01/11 - Circuit Flaws Blamed For China Train Crash
294 - 08/01/11 - AT&T To Start Data Throttling Heaviest Users
295 - 08/01/11 - Why Public Email Needs a Police Force
296 - 08/01/11 - Foxconn To Employ 1 Million Robots
297 - 08/01/11 - Hackers Could Open Convicts' Cells In Prisons
298 - 08/01/11 - Radio Energy Harvested With Inkjet-Printed Antenna
299 - 08/01/11 - DVD - the Physics of Crystals, Pyramids and Tetrahedrons
300 - 08/01/11 - KeelyNet BBS Files w/bonus PDF of 'Keely and his Discoveries'
301 - 08/01/11 - 'The Evolution of Matter' and 'The Evolution of Forces' on CD
302 - 08/01/11 - High Voltage & Free Energy Devices Handbook
303 - 08/01/11 - Hypnosis CD - 3 eBooks with How To Techniques and Many Cases
304 - 08/01/11 - 14 Ways to Save Money on Fuel Costs
305 - 08/01/11 - The Physics of the Primary State of Matter
306 - 08/01/11 - $5 Alt Science MP3s to listen while working/driving/jogging
307 - 08/01/11 - 15 New Alternative Science DVDs & 15 MP3s

Be aware in case any of these links don't respond, most will be available through the Wayback Machine, simply cut and paste the link to recall the 'lost' information.

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ITEM #1 08/31/11 - DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k A very small amount of US government seed money (to be specific, $500,000) will be provided by DARPA and handed out by NASA's Ames campus in Silicon Valley. This tiny financial seed is intended to sprout and grow into a stupendous organisation able to har ness and deploy the titanic resources necessary to deliver working interstellar transport. According to the DARPA solicitation just released (13-page/168KB PDF): For the past half century, the great domain for human exploration has been the cosmos. In a break with the past, however, space exploration has been principally a government-driven enterprise. While not without its spectacular successes, this has not p roved — and nor would history suggest otherwise — an especially promising model for long-term investment into the fundamental challenges associated with a sustained foray into space. Neither the vagaries of the modern fiscal cycle, nor net-present-value c alculations over reasonably foreseeable futures, have lent themselves to the kinds of century-long patronage and persistence needed to definitively transform mankind into a space-faring species. Assuming for the sake of argument that the investment necessary to reach the Moon scaled up with distance, a series of basic missions to Alpha Centauri along the lines of the Apollo programme might cost 2 x 1018 dollars: that's 40,000 years' worth of the present-day gross domestic product of the entire human race. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it does indicate that the Starship project may need to somehow divert or seize control of a big chunk of humanity's available resources: and thus that the project organisation itself might well be a rival to the USA's status as sole superpower rather than a benevolent research nonprofit or similar. (But we can spend 40 Trillion on secret projects, 75 billion PER YEAR on bogus Homeland Security, endless wars costing us billions per year and yet the survival of mankind REQUIRES us to go into space and DARPA jokes aout it with a paltry half a mil lion, so how do we fix this? - JWD / Check out what they think is more important "DARPA shells out $21m for IBM cat brain chip"...what ARE they thinking?) - Full Article Source ITEM #2 08/31/11 - Developing Nuclear Power Plant Tech For the Moon and Mars "On earth, nuclear reactors are under attack because of concerns over damage caused by natural disasters. In space, however, nuclear technology may get a new lease on life. Plans for the first nuclear power plant for the production of electricity to be us ed by manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets have been unveiled at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. 'The reactor itself may be about 1 ½ feet wide by 2 ½ feet high, about the size of a carry-o n suitcase. There are no cooling towers. ... The team is scheduled to build a technology demonstration unit in 2012." / Nuclear fission power in space is actually old news. In 1965, the U.S. launched SNAP-10A, which was a 45 kWt thermal nuclear fission re actor that produced 650 watts using a thermoelectric converter. (It operated for 43 days before it was shut down due to a satellite malfunction–but remains in orbit today.) Nuclear fission works by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat that is then con verted into electric power. A fission power system contains components that are similar to those found in the commercial reactors currently in use: a heat source, power conversion, heat rejection and power conditioning and distribution. For space applicat ions, however, nuclear fission features a number of differences compared with commercial reactors. “While the physics are the same, the low power levels, control of the reactor and the material used for neutron reflection back into the core are completely different,” Werner said. “Weight is also a significant factor that must be minimized in a space reactor that is not considered in a commercial reactor.” - Full Article Source ITEM #3 08/31/11 - Science Forum - Ether Wind Theory (Jan, 1934) The editor was an IDIOT "at best"! - JWD There have been several attempts to detect an ether flow through or past the earth on its trip around our sun and through space. This flow, which the experimenters expected to find, would be similar to a wind blowing through the earth’s materials; and the first attempt to prove it was the famous “etherdrift” experiment carried out by Michelson in 1887. The result of these experiments has been negative in all cases and has engendered doubts as to the existence of an ether. I believe the experiments were all carried out with instruments mounted horizontal to the earth’s surface, and am not aware of any attempt to detect a wind coming down from directly above. You might want to check out Karl Schappeller's fascinating and very rare book 'The Physics of the Primary State of Matter' - Published in the 1930s, Karl Schappeller d escribed his Prime Mover, a 10-inch steel sphere with quarter-inch copper tubing coils. These were filled with a material not named specifically, but which is said to have hardened under the influence of direct current and a magnetic field [electro-rheolo gical fluid]. With such polarization, it might be guessed to act like a dielectric capacitor and as a diode. The same material is inside the rotor. The transfer of electrons upward, and the magnetic field of the sphere combine to turn the rotor. No direct conversion of this energy to electricity is described, but the rotor could be attached to a generator... According to Schappeller, the amount of this sustaining rotation of the device would be termed ‘glowing magnetism’ and be located at the center of th e sphere. Present day terminology might be ‘plasma’. Schappeller point of view of the New Technique is that the only source of primary magnetism is a glowing core of hydrogen energy, or the primary magnetism as force is magnetism in the glowing state, or glowing magnetism, which is the Primary Force, or if we must use the present terms, the atomic force, the chemical composition of which is a hydrogen energy core interacting through mobility with its complementary cold oxygen energy stress field, the phys ics of which has already been explained. The fulcrum or basis of the New Technique based on the physics of the Primary State is thus the production of a core of glowing magnetism, the greatest available force within the reach of man, and in the Cosmos the great creative origin-force in all Nature. Primary magnetism, or a glowing hydrogen core of energy, is always spherical, because it forms radially concentrically on the point of inequality. It is therefore clear that the first technical problem we have t o solve is: what form of technical appliance is there which will put a spherical stress on any given point in the ether? The stress must, of course, be magnetic or electromagnetic in quality and thereby exert a suction on the ether on and to this point so that the surrounding ether will be drawn in, catalyzed, and finally radiated out as a stimulated stressfield which can be made to “perform work” of all kinds, just as the electric current is now used to produce mechanical power, light, heat and electroly sis for all forms of industrial purposes. - Full Article Source Thanks to John @ frontiernet for this Incredible Link ITEM #4 08/31/11 - NHS diabetic device will text for help if wearer is in danger It involves the development of a device to provide continuous blood glucose measurement using a nanowires biosensor, unlike the commonly used "finger-stick" glucose meter, which requires patients to carry out up to 10 tests a day. Nanotechnology and wirel ess technology will be used to transmit readings from the sensor to the mobile phones of NHS clinical teams. It will also provide an emergency alert to next of kin or medical personnel if the patient is suffering from a hypoglycemic attack. "Diabetic pati ents with low blood glucose can become unconscious due to hypoglycaemia and there are many reported incidents where patients, who either live or work alone, fainted without the notice of others and such occurrence can often be fatal," he said. "Therefore, a multi-functional monitoring system is important to manage the glucose level of diabetic patients and to provide a warning when the patient is unconscious." The Welsh government said the prototype is to be developed over the next 30 months and will be t aken to market by the industry consortium. The monitoring system will be able to be adapted for other chronic conditions such as coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and asthma. - Full Article Source ITEM #5 08/31/11 - Robot rubbish recycler The ‘Magpie’ system separates materials at the local rubbish plant, after waste has been picked up. It is set to make recycling easier and more effective, while also reducing the number of bins blighting our streets. All non-food waste collected from the kerbside – including plastics, glass, metal and paper – will be taken to the plant then hauled on to a huge conveyor belt, similar to an airport luggage carousel. As the waste passes around the belt, an infra-red beam scans its molecular structure and rel ays the data back to the Magpie’s ‘brain’. The machine works out what type of material it is, and counts the number of similar items. For example, water bottles made of thick plastic will be flagged up differently from mixed plastics used in packaging. On ce the Magpie has identified a number of the same items, it automatically activates powerful air jets, which propel the items down the correct tube for recycling. It is all done robotically, with no manual sorting, and the waste is processed at an impress ive rate of five tons per hour. It will enable new types of packaging – currently thrown away – to be recycled, including yogurt pots, margarine tubs and other mixed plastics. And it has been described as ‘future-proof’ because it can adapt to new materia ls which may not exist yet. - Full Article Source ITEM #6 08/31/11 - Evaluating Homeland Security A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives. But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been? Not effective at all. Unless you consider it to be an "economic stimulus" under a different name. It puts people to work and causes lots of new stuff to be manufactured and sold. I'm 100% certain that's the point. It's certainly not to save lives. "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Musli m-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism. "So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said. - Full Article Source ITEM #7 08/31/11 - New Way To Dispose Of Dead Bodies A Glasgow-based company has installed its first commercial "alkaline hydrolysis" unit at a Florida funeral home. The unit by Resomation Ltd is billed as a green alternative to cremation and works by dissolving the body in heated alkaline water. The facili ty has been installed at the Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St Petersburg, and will be used for the first time in the coming weeks. It is hoped other units will follow in the US, Canada and Europe. The makers claim the process produces a third less gree nhouse gas than cremation, uses a seventh of the energy, and allows for the complete separation of dental amalgam for safe disposal. - Full Article Source ITEM #8 08/31/11 - Giant lasers fired into the sky could be used to create rainfall The technique, called laser-assisted water condensation, could one day unlock the secrets of weather cycles and enable humans to decide where and when it rains. The new laser method is different because it uses natural humidity levels and atmospheric cond itions to create water droplets. Physicist Jerome Kasparian, of the University of Geneva, said: ‘The laser can run continuously, you can aim it well, and you don't disperse huge amounts of silver iodide in the atmosphere. ‘You can also turn the laser on a nd off at will, which makes it easier to assess whether it has any effect. When the Chinese launch silver iodide into the sky, it is very hard to know whether it would have rained anyway,’ he told the Guardian. Researchers showcased the new technique on t he banks of the Rhone near Lake Geneva after constructing the gigantic mobile laser. Following 133 hours of firing a beam of intense laser light which created nitric acid particles in the air it resulted in binding the water molecules together to create d roplets. Although it didn’t form into actual rainfall, scientists remain positive they can soon manipulate weather conditions and even prevent showers. ‘Maybe one day this could be a way to attenuate the monsoon or reduce flooding in certain areas,’ Kaspa rian added. - Full Article Source ITEM #9 08/31/11 - PodPonics – shipping containers as miniature hydroponic farms PodPonics is new hope for urban agriculture. The startup, based in Atlanta, is pursuing a new kind of recycling. They are transforming old shipping containers into miniature hydroponic farms that can be used to grow food anywhere. Matt Liotta started Pod Ponics in 2010 and it is already supplying about 200 pounds of leafy greens a week using six converted containers. About one acre’s worth of produce can be produced in each ”pod” which is in only 320 square feet. PodPonics crops use 90% less water than t raditional farms, no pesticides, less fertilizer, and go from harvest to your plate in just a matter of hours! / The shipping containers they use (either 40, 48, of 53 feet long) cost between $1800 to $2800 depending on size and condition. While container s can be stacked up to 10 high, logistically it makes more sense to keep it below four for maintenance access reasons (PodPonics doesn’t stack any of their containers at the moment). This means that a 50?x10? footprint may serve to grow ~4 acres worth of produce. - Full Article Source ITEM #10 08/31/11 - Anti-Heroin Vaccine to Appear Soon Researchers from Ural State Medical Academy developed a substance, suitable for fighting addiction to opioid drugs, including heroin. Scientists designed a synthetic anti-opioid immunogenic substance, which worked according the same principle as anti-meas les vaccine. The substance promotes synthesis of antibodies in an organism, and when the drug enters the organism, antibodies bind with it and take it out, leaving an addict without a rush. The substance has successfully passed first stage of preclinical trials and tests on laboratory animals. Next stage is testing the substance on large animals, and then no human volunteers. Two more years are required before the substance enters the market. - Full Article Source ITEM #11 08/31/11 - Fight quackery! 1950s FDA public service announcement Here's a fine old FDA public service announcement in which Raymond Massey gravely warns America to steer clear of bizarro quack devices that claim to treat arthritis with z-rays or cure cancer with music. - Full Article Source ITEM #12 08/31/11 - WIPO assigns patent for 'Geothermal Power Generation Apparatus' According to the abstract posted by the World Intellectual Property Organization: "Provided are a geothermal power generation apparatus using ultrahigh-pressure hot water and a method for using ultrahigh-pressure hot water in geothermal power generation, wherein ultrahigh-pressure ground water such as fossil seawater can be used, and a general-purpose pump can be used as a return pump for returning the water that has been used for power generation into the ground. The geothermal power generation apparatus has a production well for retrieving geothermal water from the earth, power-generating facilities for retrieving electric energy from the geothermal water by driving a turbine using the thermal energy of the geothermal water, a return pump for increasing the pressure of the geothermal water from which the thermal energy has been removed, and a return well for returning the geothermal water having a pressure increased by the return pump into the earth. A power retrieving turbine for retrieving energy of t he geothermal water and reducing the pressure of the geothermal water is provided on a passage of the geothermal water, said passage extending from the production well to the power generation facilities, so that the pressure of the geothermal water is red uced to 7 MPa or less by the power retrieving turbine, and the energy retrieved by the power retrieving turbine is used as a part of driving power for driving the return pump." The patent was filed on Feb. 18, 2010 under Application No. PCT/JP2010/052412. - Full Article Source ITEM #13 08/31/11 - SignalGuru Helps Drivers Avoid Red Lights "Researchers at MIT and Princeton have now devised a system, dubbed SignalGuru (PDF), that gathers visual data from the cameras of a network of dashboard-mounted smartphones and tells drivers the optimal speed to drive at to avoid waiting at the next set of lights." In their testing, the system saved drivers about 20 percent in fuel. / In Cambridge, where traffic signals are on fixed schedules, the researchers say the system was able to predict when lights would change with an average error of only two-th irds of a second and helped drivers cut fuel consumption by an average of 20 percent. In Singapore, where the duration of lights varies continuously according to changes in traffic flow, the error increased to an average of slightly more than one second, with one particularly light in densely populated central Singapore seeing an average error of more than two seconds. The version of the system used in the tests graphically displayed the optimal speed for avoiding a full stop at the next light, but a comm ercial version would probably use audio prompts... - Full Article Source ITEM #14 08/31/11 - The Quest For an EV Fast-Charge Standard "This article explores one of the stumbling blocks currently facing EV adoption: 'Sure, there are already public charging stations in service, and new ones are coming online daily. But those typically take several hours to fully replenish a battery. As a result, the ability for quick battery boosts — using a compatible direct current fast charger, the Leaf can refill to 80 percent capacity in 30 minutes — could potentially become an important point of differentiation among electric models. But the availab ility of fast charging points has in part been held up by the lack of an agreement among automakers on a universal method for fast charging — or even on a single electrical connector.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #15 08/31/11 - Joining Blood Vessels Without Sutures "Stanford microsurgeons have used a poloxamer gel and bioadhesive, rather than a needle and thread, to join together blood vessels. The technique, published in the recent issue of Nature Medicine, may replace the 100-year-old method of reconnecting severe d blood vessels with sutures. According to the authors of the study, 'ultimately, this has the potential to improve patient care by decreasing amputations, strokes and heart attacks while reducing health-care costs.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #16 08/31/11 - Gut Bacteria Exert Mind Control "Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut 'microbiome' influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, a ltering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior (abstract)." - Full Article Source ITEM #17 08/31/11 - Crowdsourcing Makes an API For Human Intelligence "A startup called MobileWorks claims to offer human-level intelligence to any piece of software, with APIs for image, text or speech processing that crowdsource tasks to workers in India. Unlike Amazon's Mechanical Turk, jobs can be sent in by software wi thout human help and can also be completed in 'real time' with a turnaround of a few seconds. The company claims that for problems like OCR and image recognition it makes more sense to find ways to use human intelligence than developing complex custom alg orithms." - Full Article Source ITEM #18 08/31/11 - New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage "During Display Taiwan, Transcend and Taiwan's ITRI displayed a finger-long USB stick that reportedly offers 2 TB of storage. That's no typo. It somehow holds up to 2 terabytes worth of information. So far neither company has released anything official in regards to specs or a simple introduction, nor does the high-capacity USB 3.0 stick appear on Display Taiwan's website. But as seen in the video below, the 'Thin Card' thumb drive is even smaller than a thumb, measuring slightly thicker than a penny. It offers a minimum of 16 GB and a maximum of 2 TB." - Full Article Source ITEM #19 08/31/11 - Making Fuel With Newspapers and Bacteria "Scientists at Tulane have found a natural bacteria (dubbed TU-103) that produces butanol. While butanol-producing bacteria aren't new, there are a few important points about this particular bacterium. It is the first natural bacteria that converts cellul ose directly to butanol without the cellulose needing to be processed into sugar first, and it can do this in the presence of oxygen, which kills other butanol-producing bacteria. The simplification of the process could significantly decrease the producti on costs of butanol. This bacteria could allow virtually any plant product, such as newspaper or grass clippings, to be used to produce fuel for conventional vehicles." - Full Article Source ITEM #20 08/31/11 - Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel Using Sunlight "Using state-of-the-art theoretical computations, a University of Kentucky-University of Louisville team demonstrated that an alloy formed by a 2 percent substitution of antimony (Sb) in gallium nitride (GaN) has the right electrical properties to enable solar light energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, a process known as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. When the alloy is immersed in water and exposed to sunlight, the chemical bond between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules i n water is broken (abstract). Because pure hydrogen gas is not found in free abundance on Earth, it must be manufactured by unlocking it from other compounds. Thus, hydrogen is not considered an energy source, but rather an 'energy carrier.' Currently, it takes a large amount of electricity to generate hydrogen by water splitting. As a consequence, most of the hydrogen manufactured today is derived from non-renewable sources such as coal and natural gas. The team says the GaN-Sb alloy has the potential to convert solar energy into an economical, carbon-free source for hydrogen." - Full Article Source ITEM #21 08/31/11 - Localizing Language In the Brain "A new study by MIT scientists pinpoints areas of the brain used exclusively for language (PDF), providing a partial answer to a longstanding debate in cognitive science. According to the study, there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language. After having their subjects perform the initial language task, which they call a 'functional localizer,' they had each one do a subset of seven other experiments: one on exact arithmetic, two on working memory, three on cognitive control, and on e on music; since these are the functions 'most commonly argued to share neural machinery with language.' The authors say the results don't imply that every cognitive function has its own dedicated piece of cortex; after all, we're able to learn new skill s, so there must be some parts of the brain that are both high-level and functionally flexible." - Full Article Source ITEM #22 08/31/11 - Chinese Want To Capture an Asteroid "The Chinese want to capture an asteroid into earth's orbit and mine it. From the article: 'At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those "what could possible go wrong" scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily en ter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #23 08/31/11 - Will Climate Engineering Ever Go Prime Time? "You may or may not be old enough to remember the TV commercial for margarine that had the tag line: 'It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.' But that commercial came to mind as I was reading a report out recently that looked at the viability of large clima te engineering projects that would basically alter large parts of the atmosphere to reduce greenhouse gases or basically reverse some of the effects of climate change. The congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office took a look at the current state of climate engineering science and technology (PDF), which generally aims at either carbon dioxide removal or solar radiation management." - Full Article Source ITEM #24 08/31/11 - Chemical Cocktail Turns Mice Clear "Researchers have serendipitously discovered that a mixture of urea, glycerol, and soap makes membranes transparent. When they tried the mixture on a developing mouse fetus, they found that it removed all of the pigment from the cells, rendering the fetus completely transparent. The technique allowed scientists to see fluorescent neurons buried several millimeters in the brain." / But no need to worry about invisible mice creeping into your kitchen; Scale is too strong to use on a living animal. (This reminds me of a file posted on the Keelynet BBS way back in 1990 which describes several attempts at invisibility. After looking up that file makes me think these guys found it too. Invisibility Achieved? - While discussing a variety of subjects with a friend last week, we broached the topic of invisibility. He said he had a paper which showed a photograph of a bat which had been immersed in a fluid to cause the tissues to be come transparent. The photograph was a photocopy and showed the skeleton of a bat as seen through the now clear tissues. The formula for this fluid is : 1 part - Benzyl Benzoate / 3 parts - Salicylic Methyl Ester - Full Article Source ITEM #25 08/31/11 - Generating Text From Functional Brain Images "Can you get a text output of your thoughts? Princeton scientists show that it is possible to generate text about the mental content reflected in brain images. The paper published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience describe the functional magn etic resonance imaging method used to identify areas of the brain activated when study participants thought about physical objects such as a carrot, a horse or a house." - Full Article Source ITEM #26 08/29/11 - 2 Hospitalized in Hydrogen Blast at Sylmar Energy Company Two people were critically injured Tuesday when an explosion at a Sylmar alternative energy facility blew them out of the building. One of them reportedly lost both an arm and a leg in the blast. • An explosion blew the roof off of a building where an alternative fuel company was using pressurized tanks to extract hydrogen from water. • Two people were critically injured. One of them, an off-duty firefighter, was the son of the business owner. His brother died a year ago in a similar blast. • The explosion brought the family business under renewed scrutiny. The explosion occurred at 4:20 p.m. at the Rainbow of Hope facility on the 12300 block of Gladstone Avenue near Interstate 210, according to a report in the Los Angeles Daily News. The explosion blew the roof off of the 7,400-square-foot cinder-block b uilding. The blast threw two men — 42-year-old off-duty Los Angeles firefighter Timothy B. Larson and 66-year-old consultant William Stehl — into an alley adjacent to the plant. The blast also blew out doors and windows, firing shattered glass and debris across the industrial park. The company was working on a process to create hydrogen fuel from water. Los Angeles hazmat officials said the business, which opened last spring, had never obtained a state or local permit to work with hydrogen gas. “It would be a regulated material that would fall under the right-to-know act,” said Capt. Matthew Gatewood of the fire department’s Environmental Unit, which oversees hazardous materials. “It should have been (registered with us). It was not … which means it was n ot permitted.” The building owner told ABC News that the owner of the business — Larson’s father — assured him nothing dangerous was being done there. The elder Larson also owns Realm Industries of Simi Valley (also known as Realm Catalyst), where there were two similar explosions between 2008 and 2010. The second blast, in June 2010, killed his 28-year-old son. Stehl, who was critically injured in t he Sylmar explosion on Tuesday, was indicted on federal fraud charges in March 2010. He and co-defendant Richard Rossignol are accused of fleecing more than $7 million from people who invested in an alternative energy process to create cheap energy from water. The trial was set to begin on September 19. Larson’s family, who had invested in the process and later hired Stehl as a consultant, were not implicated in the alleged fraud. - Full Article Source ITEM #27 08/29/11 - Sylmar Explosion casts shadow over Alt Science experimenters I have been following the story of the Aug. 9 explosion at Rainbow of Hope, and its connection to the June 2010 explosion at Realm Industries in Simi. If there is anything in this world left to be amazed about, it is that these maniacs have not been locke d up yet. Instead, they continue to jeopardize innocent lives. Am I the only one around whose junior high school science teacher showed what happens when you run an electric current through water? From posters' comments in the VC Star following the Simi e xplosion, it appears that a few science-minded citizens realize that all Realm Industries was doing was using electric current to break apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which they left mixed together. This hydrogen/oxygen mixture (Brown 's Gas) is explosively combustible, and Realm's "research" has been jeopardizing everyone in their vicinity, including anyone who ever went to the Time Warner Cable office. If you read both patent applications for Realm Industries closely, in the second p aragraph under "Best mode of carrying out the invention,” there is "Without being bound by theory, the inventors believe that the conversion of a water molecule with an unnatural bond angle back to a water molecule with a natural bond angle results in the release of energy." This is like saying "science does not support our claims". - Full Article Source ITEM #28 08/29/11 - First-ever images of an electron in orbit It was only two years ago that IBM showed us an image of a complete molecule, atomic bonds and all, but today’s news does that one infinitesimally-sized breakthrough better. Ladies and gents, behold the first image of an electron’s path. Utterly amazing s tuff! The IBM breakthrough was amazing enough, but now we have images of the electron’s orbital path around a nucleus! This is good, good news, because until now physicists only had models and hypotheses to work with… As was the case with the pentacene mo lecule with IBM (top left in the image), an atomic force microscope was used to capture the electron pathways, presented as darker gray bands in the other two images at center and upper left. As a quick refreseher on AFMs, they’re the microscopes that use atom-sized needles to measure individual atoms that pass underneath the pointy end. - Full Article Source ITEM #29 08/29/11 - LiFi is coming Physicist Harald Hass said he has developed a technology that can broadcast data through the same connection as a normal lamp. Handily, just turning on the light switch in a room would switch on the internet connection, according to Professor Hass of the school of engineering at Edinburgh University in the UK. Hass claims that 'LiFi', or Light Fidelity, could send wireless data from the 'white space' in TV spectrum or unused satellite signals. Current methods using radio waves to transmit data are ineffic ient, he said, citing mobile phones as an example. In this case there are 1.4 million base stations boosting the signal but most of the energy is used to cool it, meaning it is only five per cent efficient. But the 40 billion light bulbs in use across the world are far more efficient and by replacing old fashioned incandescent models with LED bulbs, Hass claimed he could turn them all into internet transmitters. This invention, which he calls D-Light, can send data faster than the 10 megabits per second s peed of a broadband connection by altering the frequency of the ambient light in the room. This could be used in hospitals, airplanes, military, and even underwater. Airplane passengers could in theory be able to surf the Internet from signals beamed out of the lights on board. "The way we transmit wireless data is inefficient electromagnetic waves, in particular radio waves which are limited, they are sparse, they are expensive and only have a certain range," Professor Hass said. - Full Article Source ITEM #30 08/29/11 - 21 Research Projects That Could Change The World Every year, governments and other institutions give scientists grants to continue valuable research in their fields. In the fall, we'll see thousands of such research projects get started — projects that will cure disease, improve agriculture, create more efficient energy, and take us into space — all thanks to funding from taxpayers and philanthropists. Here are twenty-one standout projects from many nations that will start to change the world this fall. These are just a handful of the thousands of publi cly and privately-funded science projects starting this fall, and many of the grant amounts here are intended to cover years of research to come. - Full Article Source ITEM #31 08/29/11 - Climate Change: Scientists can now control the weather We now believe that American and Russian scientists can and do control our weather. They can and do create much of the disturbances seen in nature for at least the past several decades. Scientists of at least several nations who have a history of being ho stile to one another now possess scientific knowledge that can control damaging weather to the point of being able to use such weather as hostile, destructive weapons. Exactly which countries possess this damaging capability is not clear; however, we know that, in this 20th Century, Western Capitalism has been nose-to-nose with Eastern Russian Communism. Therefore, we can only conclude that both Russia and America possess this technology. "Both intentionally and by accident, man has discovered ways to alt er the weather ... In 1968, Gordon J.F. MacDonald, a geophysicist who is now a member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality [President Nixon], described possible military applications of weather modification in a chapter of the book, 'Unless Peace Comes'. " Louise Purrett then lists some of the devastating weather that can be produced: 1. Heavy precipitation -- Of course, heavy precipitation causes flooding, just exactly what we have been experiencing lately, in the most fertile and productive agricultural land in the world, i.e., the American Midwest. Our own Government is using thi s Weather Warfare on us! Why? They want to move us into the New World Order, and change our system of Government. As we have stated so many times in the past, they are planning a severe series of crises to so panic us that we will allow our freedoms to be taken away. 2. Drought -- Today, July, 1998, the South, especially Texas, is experiencing the kind of drought that devastates farmers, and drives them into bankruptcy. How many straight days of record heat does it take to turn fertile farmland into useless wastela nd? Remember, no civilization can survive if it loses its ability to feed its people. Since this current group of leaders is New Agers who hate our Industrial Civilization, we should be very concerned about their ability to control weather! 3. Steer Hurricanes toward targeted shores -- We should never, ever have to worry about a hurricane hitting our shores again! But, they continue to do so, don't they? Keep this in mind for our next article, Part 3. 4. Warm or cool the entire world's temperature -- I think it is now very clear that our scientists are causing Global Warming. Of course, such Global Warming serves the purposes of causing enough panic to allow a Global Government to be established. Se e NEWS1198 for more details. 5. Punching a hole in the Ozone layer over an enemy nation. Isn't it interesting to note that this phenomenon is precisely what is being alleged by New Age leaders? What is their solution? To totally change our lifestyle. We will speak more to what the y really mean by this in Part 3. 6. Alter the Ice Caps, possibly even bringing on a new Ice Age. Therefore we know that these technology can be used to bring on either a warming or a cooling of the entire world, depending upon what the leaders want to do. It seems apparent that they h ave decided to warm the world. We find a source like Gordon J.F. MacDonald, a geophysicist of the calibre needed to become head of President Nixon's EPA Council, totally believable. We could quote many more articles that the ones chosen for this article. These other articles come fr om prestigious papers as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek Magazine, and Federal Government publications. However, for the sake of brevity, we will not be reporting these other articles individually, as they tell the same story as the ones we have reported. The major fact we have proven is that Weather Control and Warfare capabilities have been long reported in various ways over the past decades, but no one has ever paid much attention. The vast majority of the people still believe tha t man cannot control the Weather, that only God can control it. Deeply seated notions are very difficult to remove, and this notion that only God can create and control Weather is one of the most deeply seated. - Full Article Source ITEM #32 08/29/11 - Drug implant that can develop a healthy, 90-day tan Once inserted under the skin, the capsule stimulates the production of melanin, a naturally-occurring pigment that dictates skin colour and the level of harmful UV radiation it absorbs. Researchers said the tan could last up to three months. "Potentially, it does offer an alternative to commercial sunscreens, and there are lots of senior scientists who are convinced it's safe," Manchester University professor of experimental dermatology Lesley Rhodes said, adding that more research into the long-term effe cts of the implant was needed before it could be made available to the public. - Full Article Source ITEM #33 08/29/11 - Paper Pellets The ratepayer-owned utility is located in the small city of Manitowoc on the eastern border Wisconsin shares with Lake Michigan. MPU serves about 16,000 customers and cofires around 15 percent paper biomass pellets with petroleum coke and coal in the circ ulating fluidized bed boilers employed at its main power plant on Columbus Street, according to MPU’s Power Production Manager Red Jones. “The paper pellets have been great for us because they help us handle wet fuel,” he says. “When our petroleum coke ge ts wet, one of the things that makes it a lot easier for us is to put quite a bit of paper pellets in at that time. Not only does it tend to suck up some of the moisture, but it literally makes the product flow better so we have a lot less bridging and bl ockages.” Because of a Wisconsin incineration rule, MPU is not allowed to use more than 30 percent biomass in its fuel mixture. Still, cofiring paper pellets almost completely meets the utility’s obligations under the Midwest Renewable Energy Trading Syst em. “We end up satisfying our renewable energy quotas using this and other sources as well, most of that being purchased,” Jones says, adding that the percentage of biomass burned depends completely on the supply. - Full Article Source ITEM #34 08/29/11 - FBI deploys fingerprint system for mobile devices Federal Computer Week reports on a new mobile system deployed throughout the United States that allows police officers to check fingerprints of someone, say, pulled over for a traffic stop or arrested for some reason, against a database of fingerprints be longing to high-risk offenders and terror suspects. The system is now available to thousands of state and local police nationwide. The new Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC) is part of the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) syste m. RISC has been tested in Texas, Florida and several other states for two years and is now being implemented nationwide, FBI officials said in a statement. (...) The NGI system compares the fingerprints against a registry of 2.5 million sets of fingerpri nts of wanted persons, known or “appropriately suspected” terrorists, Sex Offender Registry subjects and others, said Kevin Reid, program manager for NGI. The database is designed to include individuals who are repeat offenders of the most serious crimes, considered the nation's "worst of the worst," he said. The automated matching process sends a response to the officer in about 10 seconds, Reid added. Although many states and communities have deployed mobile devices for fingerprint checks, those devices were only capable of checking local and state databases. RISC uses a national database, which can help identify individuals wanted for serious crimes in other states. - Full Article Source ITEM #35 08/29/11 - xplanes experimental aircraft. exotic aeromachines. oddities. sleek silver cigars. pedal-o-trons. soviet hive-mind bombers. aerial joy. the olden days. action shots. propaganda posters. etc - Full Article Source ITEM #36 08/29/11 - Price of a hospital circumcision in the US: $23,000 My son was born 14 mo ago and because he was born in a birth center, he could not get circumcised at birth. Our hospital (Cambridge Hospital in MA) does not have a pediatric surgeon for this procedure so we were given a referral for a doctor at Mass Gener al (Boston, MA). When I called Mass General to get a quote on the price, I got the following: $23,000 (includes Facility, Physician, Anesthesia). This procedure is less than 30 minutes; the doctor himself even stated that this is one of the easiest proced ures. I’ve researched prices for other countries and found a high of $1200. (I'm not too surprised, because one of my relatives was billed $106,911.93 for an 8-day hospital stay in California after he swallowed his denture piece.) - Full Article Source ITEM #37 08/29/11 - Battle for CA desert: Why is government driving folks off their land? The Antelope Valley is a vast patch of desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a segment of the few rugged individualists who live out there increasingly are finding themselves the targets of armed raids from local code enforcement agents, who' ve assembled into task forces called Nuisance Abatement Teams (NATs). The plight of the Valley's desert dwellers made regional headlines when county officials ordered the destruction of Phonehenge: a towering, colorful castle constructed out of telephone poles by retired phone technician Kim Fahey. Fahey was imprisoned and charged with several misdemeanors. But Fahey is just one of many who've been targeted by the NATs, which were assembled at the request of County Supervisor Mike Antonovich in 2006. LA W eekly reporter Mars Melnicoff wrote an in-depth article in which she exposed the county's tactic of badgering residents with minor, but costly, code violations until they face little choice but to vacate the land altogether. "They're picking on the the pe ople who are the most defenseless and have the least resources," says Melnicoff. Reason.tv collaborated with Melnicoff to talk with some of the NAT's targets, such as retired veteran Joey Gallo, who might face homelessness if he's forced to leave his hous e, and local pastor Oscar Castaneda, who says he's already given up the fight and is in the process of moving off the land he and his wife have lived on for 22 years. And, while Antonovich declined an interview, we did catch up with him at a public meetin g in order to ask the big question at the center of all this: Why the sudden enforcement of these codes against people living in the middle of the desert, who seemingly are affecting no one? - Full Article Source ITEM #38 08/29/11 - "Kno" your Textbooks If you don’t want to carry your textbooks around, or scan them into digital files yourself, Kno.com is a good way to go. They’ve digitized 100,000 textbooks and you can get them for 30 to 50 percent off the regular price. Read them on your computer or use their iPad app. The iPad app has a nice Facebook feature: You can post your thoughts directly to your Facebook wall without leaving the page you’re on. It also has a “Journal” feature: Highlight text and it goes right into the Journal. Tap the Journal to see all your highlights. And not least of all, place your thoughts in a sticky note off to one side of the text. A new 3D feature lets you rotate, zoom and spin molecules and other objects. We bought “Playwriting for Dummies” for $10. Kno has a 15-day re turn policy, but it’s a good idea to check Amazon for the title first. The prices were the same every time we checked, but Amazon lets you preview the book, something Kno doesn’t. Amazon, by the way, has a new “Cloud Reader,” so you can read digital books in your web browser without downloading a program first. CourseSmart.com also has digitized textbooks. They didn’t have the playwriting book we found at Kno, or “Memoirs of Jane Austen” and other books that aren’t really textbooks per se, but they do hav e standard works, like “Biology, 10th Edition.” Their website claims they’re the leader for textbooks. - Full Article Source ITEM #39 08/29/11 - Sun Power (Jun, 1935) SCIENTISTS for some years have been conducting surveys on the sun’s radiation, to see how it fluctuates. A daily and seasonal variation is found, separate and distinct from the seasons caused by the earth’s own motion. In the dry, cloudless regions where this is done, practically the whole intensity of the sun is received through dry, thin air; and objects placed “in the sun” become very hot. Accordingly, these men, like Dr. Abbot, of the Smithsonian Institution, or the Russian scientists working in Turke stan, have built conveniences to utilize a little of the surplus energy they are working on, for heating water, cooking, etc. The Tashkend, Central Asia, group, recently published in Russian magazines a proposal for utilizing the sun’s rays at low cost— n ot for electric power, but for heating rooms, cooking, and providing hot water. Tanks, with black surfaces, properly insulated, and turned full toward the sun, will heat water almost to boiling. It is interesting to compare the proposed solar heaters, rev olving to face the sun, with a project of, supposedly, the year 2660, which appeared twenty-four years ago in a novel written by the Editor of this magazine, and entitled “Ralph 124C 41 + .” The illustration, part of which is reproduced here, shows a fiel d of sun-power devices, rotating to face the sun, in a field electrically rid of fog and moisture. - Full Article Source ITEM #40 08/29/11 - Adrenaline May Damage DNA "Ever wonder why heads of state tend to age twice as fast as the rest of us? New research shows that adrenaline may damage DNA, potentially accelerating aging." - Full Article Source ITEM #41 08/29/11 - Theoretical Shoe Inserts Could Power Your Gadgets "As published on nature.com, a process called electrowetting, 'in which a conductive liquid droplet, placed on an electrode, is physically deformed by an applied electric charge,' could be used to provide 10 watts of juice to smartphones and other gadgets as you walk. 'The technique depends on the use of a dielectric material — which is usually an insulator but that can be polarized in an electric field — to coat the electrode. When the dielectric is charged the droplet can wet the surface more easily, an d deforms. In his system, Krupenkin runs this process backwards, using the changing physical form of liquid drops between dielectric-coated plates to generate charge and therefore electrical power.' So far, Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor have been able to pr oduce a few milliwatts of power along tiny channels a few millimeters wide. They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it." - Full Article Source ITEM #42 08/29/11 - Low-Cost DIY Cell Network Runs On Solar "low-cost, low-power cell base station featuring easy, off-the grid deployment with solar or wind power; local services autonomous from national carriers; and an impressive portfolio of voice & data services (not just GSM). It's designed to connect rural areas in the developing world, but could have wider application like disaster recovery." - Full Article Source ITEM #43 08/29/11 - Russian Resupply Crash Could Mean Leaving ISS Empty "In the wake of the Russian Progress vehicle crash shortly after launch on Aug. 24, a chain of events has been set into motion that could result in the decision not to fly astronauts into orbit. If this happens, the ISS will be temporarily mothballed befo re the end of the year to avoid landing astronauts during the harsh Kazakh winter." - Full Article Source ITEM #44 08/29/11 - Book Scanner Want to digitize your comic books, textbooks and rare books without breaking their backs? Plustek has come out with the OpticBook 3800. We found it offered for $250-$280 on the web. Often the point of digitizing any book or document is to make it searchab le. The new scanner produces copies that are PDFs. This means the scanned pages retain all of their original look and can be searched for key words. The files can be opened on any type of computer, as well as iPads and most mobile devices. The OpticBook’s strength is its ability to scan without getting any book spine shadow or distorted text. The resolution can go up to 1200 dots per inch (dpi), but that slows everything down. Dropping the resolution down to 300 dpi can scan a letter size page in color in seven seconds. This is sharp enough to get clear text from almost any document. - Full Article Source ITEM #45 08/29/11 - Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police Even in a country and a world where copyright can be claimed as an excuse to prevent you from taking a photo of a giant sculpture in a public, tax-paid park, and openly recording visiting police on your own property can be construed as illegal wiretapping , it sometimes seems like the overreach of officialdom against people taking photos or shooting video knows no bounds. It's a special concern now that seemingly everyone over the age of 10 is carrying a camera that can take decent stills and HD video. it' s refreshing, therefore, to read that a Federal Appeals Court has found unconstitutional the arrest of a Massachusetts lawyer who used his phone to video-record an arrest on the Boston Common. (Here's the ruling itself, as a PDF.) From the linked article, provided by reader schwit1: "In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First a nd Fourth Amendment rights." - Full Article Source ITEM #46 08/26/11 - Guarding property Don’t let your best ideas be taken over by others. There are plenty of ways to make sure that your intellectual property is safe and secure. HAVING PUT LONG hours into developing a bright idea, the last thing any budding entrepreneur wants is for someone to steal it. The catch-all term to cover the broad sweep of ideas ownership is intellectual property (IP), and patents, trademarks, designs and copyright can all be used to protect it. A patent will protect your idea from the day of filing for a fixed period and it will stop others making, selling or using the technology protected by it. However, it is important to keep your idea confidential prior to filing the application. Trademarks are normally used to protect a company’s brand. Registered trademarks often have the ® symbol beside them. For unregistered trademarks, it is advisable to use the ™ symbol to assert your rights. Trademarks are precious because they help to e stablish your brand with consumers and ultimately influence their buying decisions. Design protection covers the aesthetic aspects of a product, for example, designs for Newbridge silverware or Waterford Crystal products. Design rights can be registered and, if necessary, supplemented with other forms of protection. Design protection extends to packaging and it is not uncommon to see legal skirmishes between companies if they believe a competitor is “stealing” their look. The claims made can be a mixture of design and copyright infringement and also “passing off”, which is a type of u nregistered trade mark protection. Copyright protects literature, film and music as well as sound recordings, broadcasts and software. Copyright protection is free and automatic but Coyle points out that “copyright doesn’t necessarily guarantee protection against a competitor independen tly creating identical or closely similar works”. He advises companies to mark their territory by putting a formal note on a sketch that dates it and asserts ownership and have this witnessed. Copyright owners use the © symbol together with a “rights rese rved” notice for this purpose. “It is also important to document the know-how behind the software or an invention. People carry a lot of additional knowledge in their heads that may be vital to how things work. It is important that they disclose this information on an ongoing basis to the company and that they sign a confidentiality agreement around it.” Bateman also advises companies to put IP symbols and notices on their products, marketing materials and websites. “If you find people are infringing your IP rights, make sure you ta ke prompt action against them, including writing to them. If you fail to protect your rights, you can dilute them and maybe ultimately lose them altogether,” she says. - Full Article Source ITEM #47 08/26/11 - The Art of Selling Invention Ideas Would-be inventors are polishing off their invention ideas and finding out what opportunities they have to sell them in light of the recent and ongoing economic downturn. Ad-Gen markets inventors’ concepts after they have already completed their patent ap plication with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Invention ideas that we present to manufacturers on behalf of our clients only have a few seconds to make an impact with key decision makers,” explains Neil Montgomery, VP of Sales and Marketi ng for Ad-Gen. “Top-notch visual communication skills are imperative. Prokop’s skill set will capitalize on these few seconds and give a great first impression for our clients.” In addition to working on promoting the invention ideas of Ad-Gen’s clients, Prokop will also update the company’s marketing presence by updating their websites, designing new brochures, and expanding their social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This will make it easier for inventors and manufacturers to find them and to in teract with the company which should assist with commercializing more of the products that Ad-Gen works with. - Full Article Source ITEM #48 08/26/11 - Experiments Show Gravity Is Not an Emergent Phenomenon One of the most exciting ideas in modern physics is that gravity is not a traditional force, like electromagnetic or nuclear forces. Instead, it is an emergent phenomenon that merely looks like a traditional force. This approach has been championed by Eri k Verlinde at the University of Amsterdam who put forward the idea in 2010. He suggested that gravity is merely a manifestation of entropy in the Universe, which always increases according to the second law of thermodynamics. This causes matter distribute itself in a way that maximises entropy. And the effect of this redistribution looks like a force which we call gravity. Much of the excitement over Verlinde's idea is that it provides a way to reconcile the contradictions between gravity, which works on a large scale, and quantum mechanics, which works on a tiny scale. The key idea is that gravity is essentially a statistical effect. As long as each particle is influenced by a statistically large number of other particles, gravity emerges. That's why it' s a large-scale phenomenon. - Full Article Source ITEM #49 08/26/11 - How acupuncture works The electrical engineering department of Columbia University and the medicine faculty of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have collaborated on a study that proves how acupuncture works. Professor Edward Yang of Columbia, acupuncture specialist Dr. Li Gen g and former HKU medicine faculty dean Professor Lam Shiu-kum spearheaded the eight-year study, which shows that acupuncture works by stimulating the production of endorphins in the area where acupuncture is administered. When an acupuncture needle pierce s tissue while being manually oscillated, slow-moving acoustic waves are sent into the muscles, triggering calcium flow. Calcium interacts with white blood cells to produce endorphins that help alleviate symptoms such as pain and nausea. The effectiveness of acupuncture depends on how accurately the needle hits the acupoints. The acoustic waves generated by acupuncture can travel between six and eight centimeters along the grain of pierced muscle only when the needle is inserted on an acupoint. If the nee dle is a centimeter off of the acupoint, it can still be effective, even though the waves generated will travel only three to four centimeters. The study does not explain why this happens, but it does find that muscles have a memory of the waves and can e ven recreate the waves themselves. - Full Article Source ITEM #50 08/26/11 - Fluid that 'magically' rebuilds teeth could obsolete dentist's drill Scientists at the University of Leeds have developed a peptide-based fluid that is painted onto the surface of a decaying tooth. The fluid seeps into any cavities and stimulates the tooth to regenerate itself. Here's how it works: The fluid contains a pep tide known as P 11-4 which is capable of assembling into a fibrous gel. After seeping into the cavities and micro-chasms of the tooth, the fluid essentially forms a scaffolding that encourages calcium and other minerals to latch on within the tooth. Basic ally, it allows the tooth to fill itself — a pain-free, noninvasive method of tooth repair. The gel has been tested on a small sample size of adults with encouraging results, demonstrating that it is effective in reversing the early stages of tooth decay. "If these results can be repeated on a larger patient group, then I have no doubt whatsoever that in two to three years time this technique will be available for dentists to use in their daily practice," said Leeds professor Paul Brunton. - Full Article Source ITEM #51 08/26/11 - Build your own 84 kV lightning stick There’s a proverb that says ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’. Now that stick can come in a high-voltage form factor. The device above, which reminds us of a side-handled baton with a coke can stuck on the end, is a portable Van de Graaff generator. Al though debated in the comments, the creator of this hack claims you can shock someone with 84 kV of electricity using the device. Of course as a weapon it’s lacking since we’re talking about static electricity; the voltage can be through the roof but the current is extremely low. Despite that, there are some fun things you can do with them. The video after the break show it throwing off sparks with the lights dimmed. [Yardleydobon] also includes a few other tricks at the end of his tutorial. He makes a se t of Franklin Bells using two more soda cans with the aluminum tab from one suspended in between them. As he charges it up, the tab dances back and forth, ringing the ‘bells’ it runs into. Once they are charged, the ringing can be restarted by discharging just one of the cans. - Full Article Source ITEM #52 08/26/11 - Hack: Powerline device takeover Independent researchers Dave Kennedy and Rob Simon showed Defcon a device they customized that can tap into home powerlines to monitor and control home alarm and security camera systems. Using the device and broadband-over-powerline technology, burglars c ould plug the device into an electric outlet on the outside of a house and monitor devices inside the home. They could deduce, for example, that if the alarm system is turned on and security cameras activated then the residents are not at home. The device can send signals that jam signals from the security devices, leaving burglars free to break in without worry that alarms will be set off, the researchers say. - Full Article Source ITEM #53 08/26/11 - 1972 Electric Datsun - 0 to 60mph in 1.8 seconds World's Fastest A mechanic has modified the vehicle with a powerful electric engine which can go from 0-60mph in 1.8 seconds, quicker than most sports cars. It can go 90 miles without being recharged and the 500 horsepower means it can cover a quarter of a mile in just t en seconds. Raw power: This 1972 Datsun 1200 is the quickest car on Earth after being modified with a powerful electric engine that can go from 0-60mph in 1.8 seconds. He took the shell of a 1972 Datsun and put a custom-built dual-armature nine-inch seri es-wound electric motor inside it. He also installed a 192 lithium-polymer cell battery pack which gives it a total of 355 Volts or 22.7kWh of energy. Compared to the original Datsun it now packs quite a punch - the original car only comes with 69 horsepo wer and takes 14.5 seconds to reach 60mph. Going from 0-60mph in 1.8 seconds means the car is faster than a £70,000 Tesla Roadster, which takes 3.9seconds to cover the same distance. Mr Wayland said that those who come up against the car are ‘stunned’. If the Zombie was put into production that cost may come down to $25,000, he added - but that is for the battery alone. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2028836/The-worlds-quickest-electric-car-1972-Datsun-0-60mph-1-8-seconds. - Full Article Source ITEM #54 08/26/11 - Scientist creating artificial life that feeds off carbon dioxide A mission to Mars may seem like a distant dream to cash-strapped Nasa, but a controversial scientist says we are on the verge of a breakthrough that would enable humans to settle there. U.S. scientist Craig Venter stunned the scientific community last yea r when he revealed that he had created the world's first synthetic organism. Now his team are working on engineering the cells to grow by consuming carbon dioxide - and he thinks we can harness this to set up camp on the Red Planet. Dr Venter says his tea m are working on genetically engineering synthetic cells to use carbon dioxide to make food, fuel and plastics. This could lead to bacterial 'factories' that would manufacture artificial organisms designed for specific tasks. - Full Article Source ITEM #55 08/26/11 - 3-D Design Simplified A new website could accelerate the adoption of 3-D printing. Researchers at Cornell University have launched EndlessForms, a website that lets users create sculptures virtually and render them in physical form. The site demonstrates a technology that desi gners could use to create new products and accelerate the broader adoption of 3-D printing. People can use EndlessForms without any prior 3-D design experience. The user begins by choosing an object from a randomly generated gallery. The site creates a ne w gallery of variants of the chosen object, and the user selects one of the variants. The process repeats, gradually refining the design into the shape the user desires. Users can share this shape with other users and, if they wish, send the object to a 3 -D printing service to render it in a variety of materials, including plastic, silver, and gold-plated steel. A five-to-seven-centimeter plastic model typically costs less than $10. The rules EndlessForms uses to generate objects and their variants resemb le those of developmental biology—the study of how DNA instructions unfold to create an entire living organism. - Full Article Source ITEM #56 08/26/11 - Get Someone Else to Pay For Your Ventures If you have aspirations to be an entrepreneur or inventor, you know that one of the hardest things to do is to get enough capital to make your invention or business a reality. The traditional path has been to get a loan (or several) from a traditional ban k, find a benefactor willing to back you, borrow from friends and family, or work three jobs to bring in enough income to finance your venture until it takes off. But thanks to the Internet, there are now other options. A new phenomenon called “crowdfundi ng” has emerged. Like crowdsourcing that uses the power of the Internet to bring together large groups of people to do odd jobs, crowdfunding uses the power of the Internet to bring together large groups of people with small amounts of money to collective ly back a venture. Basically, the person looking for funding posts an appeal on a crowdfunding website and people interested in backing the person contribute money to the cause. Sometimes no payback of the money is required. It’s simply generosity from on e person to another. Other sites have specific payback arrangements, while others use a revenue sharing model. Almost all of them charge fees in some form, so make sure you understand your costs before you enter into any agreement. If you want to try this funding route, here are three websites to consider: - Full Article Source ITEM #57 08/26/11 - Quenching the thirst for purified water IT MAY HAVE taken six years, but Louth-based entrepreneur Pat Farrelly of Aqua-Nu has come up with a pioneering water filtration technology that has some of the biggest names in the water- filtration industry knocking on his door. Farrelly is keeping mum about the detail of his invention (which is protected by 42 patents) but in broad terms he has developed a method of filtering water through ceramic that works 700 times faster than its closest rival and has the power to knock out a long list of water-bor ne illnesses such as legionella and E.coli and tropical diseases such as sleeping sickness and river blindness. The system also removes contaminants such as heavy metals and pesticides. Farrelly’s system (which can be retro-fitted) uses ultra-high unassis ted flow rate ceramics and an original anti-microbial treatment system to clean the water. Farrelly says the technology has far-reaching commercial and humanitarian applications. What makes Farrelly’s system of particular interest is that it works without pressure (ceramics usually need heavy pressure to work) and that the filter disc can be made in any shape or size. This means it will work with anything from a water bottle to a group water scheme and can be used in a wide range of industrial, commercial and domestic applications. The product will initially be made for industrial use, but also on the way is the PurityCap, aimed at domestic consumers who regularly buy bottled water. The PurityCap fits into the top of most water bottles and means that bott les can be filled from the tap instead of replaced, and the water is filtered by the system before drinking. Ceramics manufacturing is a specialised field and the discs will be made in Stuttgart. With the product now out there, Farrelly says the company i s already in talks with some of the biggest household names in water filtration. - Full Article Source ITEM #58 08/26/11 - The Difference Between Invention And Innovation Innovation is a practice, not an idea. Invention is an idea, a novel idea, and, like all ideas, a novel idea is easily transferable from person to person—introduce one person to the concept of personal liberty, he tells another, she passes it on to a thir d, and, like a benign infection, pretty soon the whole country is swept up in the mission to secure personal liberty for all. Innovation is “novelty that can be applied.” This means that there is a person involved, someone actually doing the doing, a Ralp h. An innovation is transferable only if the person you are delivering the innovation to has the same strengths as the person who created it in the first place. What is effective and authentic in the hands of one person looks forced, fake, and foolish in the hands of another. - Full Article Source ITEM #59 08/26/11 - Bisexual men really do exist, say scientists Good news, bisexual men! A recent study from Northwestern University has confirmed that you do, in fact, exist! This is countering a previous study by the same research group that suggested men who claimed to be bisexual were really straight or gay. The d ifference: For this version of the study, researchers made sure to actually recruit some bisexuals. In the new study, published online in the journal Biological Psychology, the researchers relied on more stringent criteria for selecting participants. To i mprove their chances of finding men aroused by women as well as men, the researchers recruited subjects from online venues specifically catering to bisexuals. They also required participants to have had sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex and a romantic relationship of at least three months with at least one person of each sex. Men in the 2005 study, on the other hand, were recruited through advertisements in gay-oriented and alternative publications and were identified as heterosexual , bisexual or homosexual based on responses to a standard questionnaire. In both studies, men watched videos of male and female same-sex intimacy while genital sensors monitored their erectile responses. While the first study reported that the bisexuals g enerally resembled homosexuals in their responses, the new one finds that bisexual men responded to both the male and female videos, while gay and straight men in the study did not. - Full Article Source ITEM #60 08/26/11 - $9K worth of stolen camera gear returned using GadgetTrak With the help of police, Heller was able to track the images to another professional photographer through Facebook, who had unknowingly purchased the stolen camera from an individual and even had the receipt to prove it. The camera was returned to Heller and the police are currently investigating the individual whom it was purchased from, the investigation is still ongoing. This is the first time stolen property has been recovered by tracking the serial number embedded in images. We have also learned that thanks to this recovery, the LAPD is now recommending our tool to detectives and officers in the field. - Full Artic le Source ITEM #61 08/26/11 - Clam’s Shell Gives Health Rays (May, 1931) - Full Article Source ITEM #62 08/26/11 - Evangelical Scientists Debate Creation Story "Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe humanity descend from Adam and Eve, but NPR reports that evangelical scientists are now saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account and that it is unlikely that we all descended from a single pair of humans. 'That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years so not likely at all,' says biologist Dennis Venema, a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Chr istian group that tries to reconcile faith and science. 'You would have to postulate that there's been this absolutely astronomical mutation rate that has produced all these new variants in an incredibly short period of time. Those types of mutation rates are just not possible. It would mutate us out of existence.' Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century and say it's time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no ser pent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence." - Full Article Source ITEM #63 08/26/11 - MK-1 Robotic Arm Capable of Near-Human Dexterity and Disco Dancing The MK-1 Robotic Arm from HDT Global comes from a DARPA sponsored project to create a highly advanced prosthetic limb. The disco dance moves shown at the beginning of this video show off the impressive dexterity of the modular servo units that comprise th e MK-1 Robotic Arm. - Full Article Source ITEM #64 08/26/11 - Does Religion Influence Epidemics? "Whether or not they believe in God, evolutionary biologists may need to pay closer mind to religion. That's because religious beliefs can shape key behaviors in ways that evolutionary theory would not predict, particularly when it comes to dealing with d isease. According to a new study, some of today's major religions emerged at the same time as widespread infectious diseases, and the two may have helped shape one another. The same dynamics may be reflected today in how people in Malawi deal with the AID S epidemic." - Full Article Source ITEM #65 08/26/11 - Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware "In their most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers pointed out a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 20 11 as there were in the previous three years. Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threat s to effectively dodge many security defenses." - Full Article Source ITEM #66 08/26/11 - Russian Supply Vehicle To ISS Burns "The Russian cargo spacecraft 'Progress' developed problems and burned up in the atmosphere shortly after its launch at 1300 GMT. From the article: 'The Russian space agency said the Progress M-12M cargo ship was not placed in the correct orbit by its roc ket and fell back to Earth. The vessel was carrying three tonnes of supplies for the ISS astronauts.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #67 08/26/11 - When Algorithms Control the World "The BBC has an interesting if not apocalyptic take on the spread of algorithms into everyday life. Perhaps the author should have spent a little more time discussing how algorithms in everyday life have improved things like communications, medical care, etc... I guess doom and gloom sells more ads. From the article: 'At last month's TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin Slavin delivered one of the tech show's most "sit up and take notice" speeches where he warned that the "maths that computers use to decide stuff" was infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Among the examples he cited were a robo-cleaner that maps out the best way to do housework, and the online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling Wall Street.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #68 08/26/11 - NASA Creating Laser Communication System For Mars "NASA is in the process of developing a new technology under project Laser Communications Relay Demonstration or LCRD which will allow them to provide faster means of communications from Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) currently can only send at speeds of around 6 Mbps or about like a DSL modem here on Earth. At this rate, it can take upwards to 90 minutes to transmit a single high resolution image to Earth from Mars. With the MRO outfitted with the new technology it would be able to transmit the same high resolution image back to Earth at over 100 Mbps and only taking about 5 minutes to do so." (Better but not instantaneous. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #69 08/26/11 - When Airsoft gets boring, build a coil gun! Here at Hackaday, we’re all about repurposing old items you no longer use. Reader [Liquider] wrote in to share his latest creation, a coil gun built from an old Airsoft pistol. He removed a handful of components from the pistol and installed a 800 uF/300V capacitor inside the grip. A small storage compartment was added under the barrel, which houses the AA battery he uses to drive the circuit. A modified reloading mechanism makes it easy to drop a metal projectile right in front of the coil before firing. Once the pistol is charged up, a switch installed behind the trigger discharges the cap, creating a magnetic pulse that accelerates the metal projectile forward. [Liquider] estimates that the kinetic energy produced by the coil is 0.1 Joules, which fires of the slug at a reasonable speed. - Full Article Source ITEM #70 08/26/11 - Entrepreneur Makes Millions Selling Virtual Land "How much would you pay for a piece of imaginary real estate? Anshe Chung has made millions renting it. Today, Anshe Chung Studios has 80+ employees managing thousands of rental properties, helping design new 3D virtual chat rooms, and making tons of mone y on virtual to real currency exchanges. Anshe was the first person whose virtual property exceeded a real world value of 1 million dollars, and Anshe Chung Studios is perhaps the single largest third party developer of virtual property ever." - Full Article Source ITEM #71 08/26/11 - SEC Hit With Data Destruction Complaint "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US financial regulator, has been accused of destroying thousands of data files on high profile inquiries including an early-stage investigation into convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff. The al legations, raised by former SEC employee Darcy Flynn, have prompted the US Senate Judiciary Committee to write to SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro to demand an immediate explanation. The SEC exists to set a tough example on corporate governance, and it fines banks heavily for both lax practice and deliberate malpractice. Questions over any involvement it may have in sensitive document destruction are not likely to sit comfortably with some in the industry. The SEC insists it has kept records in accordance wit h the law on its computer system." - Full Article Source ITEM #72 08/23/11 - Researcher misses fund-raising goal for Clean Energy Summit booth Gary Vesperman, a retired technical writer and environmentalist, hoped to raise $3,500 for an exhibit booth at the summit, scheduled for Aug. 30 at Aria. He planned to use the display to promote alternatives to fossil fuels and renewable energy, including a power cell fueled with the radioactive metal thorium. Vesperman is helping inventors nationwide get the word out about their devices. His "Energy Inventions" booth would have allowed summit attendees, including event cosponsor and Senate Majority Leade r Harry Reid, D-Nev., to test and observe some of the devices. The Review-Journal featured Vesperman in its Sunday Business section, but no one stepped up with aid before the late Monday deadline, Vesperman said Tuesday. It's a disappointment for Vesperma n, who said the government should pay engineers and scientists to test some of the inventions, rather than giving them unemployment benefits. Vesperman said his ideas went beyond a booth at the summit. "My vision was to fill up dozens of empty commercial buildings in Henderson and Las Vegas with huge enterprises developing and manufacturing energy inventions," he said Tuesday. "It is such a shame to lose this opportunity to personally present to (Reid) a realistic way to create thousands of clean-energy i nvention jobs." (I didn't even know he was looking for funding for this, Sorry Gary! - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #73 08/23/11 - Bingaman to review energy bills for Reid’s jobs agenda Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) plans to help put meat on the bones of Democratic leaders’ plans to make “clean energy” part of their jobs agenda. Reid said Tuesday that energy measures will be in the mix but offered no specifics. Bingaman noted that his panel has approved 14 energy-related bills thus far. “Most of those are clean-energy-type legislation which will create jobs. I haven’t sat down with [Reid] and sorted through which of them would have the grea test impact on job creation and which ones I would recommend he try to move ahead with,” Bingaman told reporters. The panel, with support on both sides of the aisle, has cleared bills aimed at boosting research, development and deployment of marine renewa ble energy, small nuclear reactors, advanced vehicles, building and industrial efficiency technologies, carbon capture technologies and other issues. Perhaps the biggest energy measure approved has been legislation that would create a federal “clean energ y deployment administration” (CEDA) that would expand financing for a range of low-emissions projects. CEDA is designed to provide an array of financing tools — including loans, loan guarantees and other kinds of support — to promising technologies that a re facing the “valley of death” between technology invention and commercial deployment. But while the idea is that such a “green bank” would eventually become self-sustaining, the $10 billion in initial capitalization needed could create political hurdles . Bingaman said Wednesday that he has not yet settled on an offset for the initial cash infusion. - Full Article Source ITEM #74 08/23/11 - Tesla, Chicago, and the War of the Currents Tesla’s many inventions and his hundreds of patents in areas of electronic and mechanical engineering formed the foundation of the electronic age. He was a pioneer in radio and remote control. A few of his more creative ideas, like a death ray and a came ra that could photograph thoughts, never got made, unfortunately. But his most significant invention was likely the AC motor, which is used in most of the appliances we use today. However, the dominance of AC didn't come easily. Historians call it the "Wa r of the Currents," and it turns out the war was arguably won in Chicago. AC, or alternating current, may be Tesla’s greatest contribution to the modern world. AC allows for the transmission of electricity over long distances without great losses, which is the major weakness of DC, or direct current. Using transformers to convert the voltage and current of electricity, Tesla’s AC system could send high voltage low current electricity over power lines, then change that electricity to the low voltage high current form more suitable for use in homes and factories. Industrialist George Westinghouse recognized Tesla’s eccentric genius and the advantages of AC, and so the two began working together. On the other side, Thomas Edison was backing DC. At stake was the establishment of a standard for the developing US industrial economy. (end of the Tesla Church story) John Keely originally developed the rotary sonic field in 1871 as his 'compound motor' which Tesla stole and renamed 'polyphase'. In 1880, long after Keely had given many free public demonstrations and was all over the WORLD press, Tesla was still in S erbia where 'Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory.' That includes news items where I have no doubt he was well aware of Keely long before coming to live in New York, a scant 90 miles or so from Philadelphia where Keely was doing his research. Years ago, I have had in my hot little hands, a handwritten letter from Nikola Tesla to Keely's primary sponsor, Clara Bloomfield-Moore in which Tesla rants and rails about Keely being a fraud and a crook and to please bestow her patronage on him inste ad of the fraud Keely. It was one of the most vitriolic, hateful, psycho letters I've ever read. It was the property of Victor Hansen and he did not let me copy it at that time. Much like bible believers who refuse to acknowledge the talking SERPENT as the true benefactor of all that we are and know, so too do Tesla Chur ch believers refuse to acknowledge Keely had demonstrated rotary sonic motors and the 'polyphase' principle long before the plagiarist Tesla. If you can't see the many 'polyphase' clues in these Keely motors, then you are too blinded by the Tesla mythos t o be helped by rationality and logic. Realize kiddies that sound waves have pressure and rarefaction zones, ergo, push and pull and yes, even BALANCE when the two (or more) collide. You can use 'chords' (3 notes) or combinations which Keely used in his 'c ompound engine' acoustic technology. Thus motor technology from sound. I'll grant Tesla was a good engineer, but not an inventor as everything points to his being a plagiarist of the highest order, stealing original ideas from true inventors without giving them the least credit. And so, racked by unending GUILT, forever f earful someone would put two and two together and realize what he had done, he was blasted with major Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which twisted his personal life and warped his remaining days. My only axe to grind with Tesla is that he stole and did no t give credit to Keely and history needs to stand corrected. Don't take credit for invention when you copied it and didn't have the integrity to thank the true inventor. Wiki on Nikola Tesla - On 6 June 1884, Tesla first arrived in the United States, in New York City. Tesla worked in New York as a laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and r aise capital for his next project. In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed t he basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution." "Thirds, sixths, and ninths, are extraordinarily powerful." - John Keely Keely writes; "The phenomenon of rotation arises from the harmonic interaction of the dominant and enharmonic elements of the flow: in other words, the first and third, the third and ninth, etc.; those whose vibrations bear the proportions to each other 3 3 1/3 : 100." Here copied but not explained by the plagiarist Tesla; "If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe." - Tesla About 1914, Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity, and this undoubted ly hurt what was left of his reputation. - Full Article Source ITEM #75 08/23/11 - Fukushima grows sunflowers to clean up radiation contamination Some 80,000 people were forced to evacuate from a vast swathe of land around the reactor as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods — and have no idea when, if ever, they can return to homes that have been in their families for generations. Worse still, radiation spread well outside the mandatory evacuation zone, nestling in “hot spots” and contaminating the ground in what remains a largely agricultural region. Rice, still a significant staple, has not been planted in many areas. Others face stringent tests and potentially harmful shipping bans after radioactive cesium was found in rice straw. Excessive radiation levels have also been found in beef, vegetables, milk, seafood and water and, in hot spots more than 10 0 km from the plant, tea. In an effort to lift the spirits of area residents as well as lighten the impact of the radiation, Abe began growing and distributing sunflowers and other plants. Why would anyone want to grow a field of highly radioactive sunflowers? The engineers who grew them in a pond one kilometer from the crippled Chernobyl nuclear plant, an area often called the most radioactive spot on Earth, are excited about the possib ilities. That’s because this patch of sunflowers marks the first successful field demonstration using terrestrial plants for removing radionu-clides from contaminated water, a process known as rhizofiltration. "The results we have seen at this site, as we ll as a field test in Ohio, suggest that many radionuclides can be substantially or completely removed from water using rhizofiltration ,” says Burt Ensley, president and CED of Phytotech, a Monmouth Junction, New Jersey-based environmental biotechnology firm. “We plant sunflowers, field mustard, amaranthus and cockscomb, which are all believed to absorb radiation,” said the monk. “So far we have grown at least 200,000 flowers (at this temple) and distributed many more seeds. At least 8 million sunflowers bl ooming in Fukushima originated from here.” “I planted the sunflowers from the temple alongside other vegetables, hoping they would suck up radiation,” said Mura Akiba, a local villager weeding her garden. A dosimeter placed next to her registered radiatio n levels of more than 5 microsieverts per hour, far exceeding government safety levels. Her house is located near a radioactive hot spot. - Full Article Source ITEM #76 08/23/11 - High Voltage Hacks: shrinking coins The anthem for the Great Recession might be something along the lines of, “That we’re gonna do it anyway, even if doesn’t pay.” Some men just want to watch the world burn, so Hackerbot Labs posted a great walkthrough about shrinking coins and in the proce ss making our pocket change worth just a little bit more. Their build pushes 15,000 Joules (from a 10kV 300?F cap) through a coil of wire wrapped around a coin. This creates a magnetic field in the coil and the coin. These two fields repel each other, and there’s only one way that it can end: the coin shrinks and the coil of wire explodes. The team at Hackerbot Labs linked to a great theory of operations that does a great job explaining the physics has some awesome pictures. During our research, we saw a few questions about the legality of altering currency. According to the U.S. Code, shrinking coins only illegal if it’s done fraudulently, like shrinking a penny down to the size of a dime to fool a pay phone or vending machine. Check out a video of the H ackerbot Labs setup putting as much energy as 100 heart defibrillators into a coin after the break. - Full Article Source ITEM #77 08/23/11 - A centre for eco-friendly R&D Every developed country has national centralised labs, where inventors, innovators, and scientists work towards scientific pursuits. Bhutan cannot be an exception. I have proposed an innovation lab, where Bhutanese scientists, innovators, and inventors wi ll research and develop cleaner and greener products, which is in alignment with GNH. Setting up the GNH Greenovation Lab will be a model for the world, in the field of research and development of clean and green technologies. For instance, the lab can re search and develop our own - ”Made in Bhutan”- organic solar cell. Innovation in such field would not only help in rural electrification, using our own resources, but we can also come up with organic solar forest, harnessing electrical energy in most sust ainable ways. Recently I developed a solar yatha bag to charge any mobile devices, but I still have to import solar panels. In the capital, riding bicycles is catching up. The lab could research making bamboo bicycles, which are eco-friendly and promote B rand Bhutan. Traditional Bhutanese houses are more energy conserving than concrete buildings. During summers, it is cooler and during winter it is warmer. Ingenious! In fact, we can develop the whole new concept of Green Buildings, studying our own old ho uses and show the world the substitute for air conditioning or central heating. For refrigeration, we can employ evaporative cooling. When a liquid vaporises rapidly, it expands quickly. The rising molecules of vapour abruptly increase their kinetic energ y, and this increase is drawn from the immediate surroundings of the vapour. These surroundings are therefore cool, eliminating the use of fluorocarbons. The short term objective of the lab will be to enhance the research and development of simple innovat ive green products, like human powered machines, bamboo bicycle, agricultural technology products etc.: creating employment within the country and earning foreign exchange. In long run, we can work for further sophistication like earthquake resistance bui ldings, automotive powered by water-hydro car, organic solar cells, green computing, and so on. I have hoped that our school curriculum would have more aspects of innovation and invention devoted to it, where students are taught to think, design, and inve nt. I feel, from early age, students should be taught managerial skills, where they are allowed to think more innovatively. We can have vacation innovation project for students, so that they can spend their time productively. In fact, in future, we can al locate funds for research and development upon receiving the proposal from the potential innovator/ inventor. The fund can be given to applicants under the mentorship of teacher(s), lecturer(s) or professor(s) after being approved by the board of director s. Once the lab starts operations, one of the first assignments is to develop a national innovation policy, protecting the interest of Bhutanese innovators. As of now, there is no policy to protect the intellectual property right (IPR) of Bhutanese idea(s ), hence there is the need to team up with intellectual property lawyers and experts from abroad to formulate the national policy. I have submitted my proposal, I hope with faith that the lab will materialize. - Full Article Source ITEM #78 08/23/11 - Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton. That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect. Backers of the laser plan call those fears unwarranted and praise the technology as a win dfall for a world increasingly leery of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases. But critics want a detailed risk assessment. Recently, they petitioned Washington for a formal evaluation of whether the laser initiative could backfire and speed the glob al spread of nuclear arms. “We’re on the verge of a new route to the bomb,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised President Bill Clinton and now teaches at Princeton. “We should have learned enough by now to do an assessment before we let this kind of thing out.” - Full Article Source ITEM #79 08/23/11 - When Oil And Gas Are Depleted Most of us see the progress of civilization as it has been in our lifetime and assume that it will continue as it has in our experience. Our civilization is powered by fossil fuels. There is great concern about the damage to the environment caused by the use of fossil fuels and there are developments underway to replace fossil fuels with “renewable” sources of energy. It is generally believed that renewable sources and nuclear power can provide enough energy in quantity and form to sustain and grow our ci vilization. We have built a civilization that depends on oil and gas. They will be depleted by 2100. When they are gone we cannot maintain our civilization at its present high level. Renewable sources cannot provide the quantity or forms of energy needed to replace oil and gas. The ever increasing costs of oil and gas are due to the ever increasing cost of recovery from reserves of ever decreasing productivity. Within the next few decades air and sea travel and transport will decline as costs go up. Indus trialized agriculture will be phased out with rising costs of fertilizer, farm machinery operation, and transport of agricultural products. Manufacture of products that require chemical feed stocks from oil and gas will decline. The growth in Gross Nation al Product is a measure of the increase in energy consumption. The GNP cannot continue to grow as the availability of oil and gas decreases. There will be increasing, permanent unemployment. By the end of the century the fossil fuels that sustain our civilization will be depleted. Past civilizations built on a single resource have not survived. Past civilizations depleted their resource in a region. Ours has depleted it essential resource from all the earth, a resource that can never recover. By the end of the century energy resources will total only ten to twenty percent of the amount needed to provide the current lifestyle for the large population. The world’s ten billion will face daunt ing problems; >> Feed them without nitrogen fertilizers and bulk transport >> Clothe them with only natural fibers >> House them without oil or gas heat >> Sustain and satisfy millions of permanently unemployed >> Provide water in a changed environment >> Build structures without oil and gas to harvest energy from renewable sources >> Provide adequate information recording, processing and distribution These problems and others must be solved within the lifetime of a person born today. If people of the 21st century can apply ingenuity to a declining lifestyle as they did to the improving lifestyle of the 20th century, perhaps the inevitable changes c an be made in an orderly way. - Full Article Source ITEM #80 08/23/11 - Why Do Malthusians Ignore The Sun? In short, the sun is the answer to all our problems. Popular solutions like solar panels, scaled biomass and wind turbines already tap into and tinker around with solar fluxes. Long-sighted research like artificial photosynthesis and plastic trees aim to do the same thing. Modern-day Malthusians like to play the apocalypse card, noting that the Earth is finite and that economic growth on a bounded planet cannot continue infinitely. They're right. But they're also assuming humans can't expand the boundaries. Humans currently use on the order of 15 TW of power, which is a lot, until you consider the 6000 TW of solar power that hit the Earth's surface (on average). Most of this is refracted back into outer space, with some IR radiation trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse g ases. If we generate all human power with solar energy, we'd go a long way towards increasing resource security and access. If we could increase solar energy generation by just one order of magnitude, we'd really have energy that's too cheap to meter. Technology has for centuries extended humankind's prosperity and wealth (good examples being the internal combustion engine, artificial nitrogen fixation, telecom and biotech, and the Green Revolution). Malthusians are right in that we live on a planet wi th bounded natural resources, but they assume that the machines that convert our most abundant fuel source are the most efficient (i.e., that plants are the best way to convert solar energy into useful energy). We have nowhere near the technological efficiencies, capabilities, or scale to achieve this right now. - Full Article Source ITEM #81 08/23/11 - Hydroelectricity Without Turbines or Dams? VIV is a phenomenon where vortices—or whirling masses of water—are formed and shed on the downstream side of rounded objects in a fluid current. The vortex shedding alternates from one side of a body to the other, creating a pressure imbalance that causes the body to move back and forth, not unlike a stop sign vibrating on a windy day. Since it was first observed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1504, engineers have been trying to understand VIV and keep its destructive forces away from mechanical, marine, offshor e, and nuclear engineering applications. “The cylinder is placed horizontally in the water, and the water’s current causes it to move up and down. The energy in the movement of the cylinder is then converted to electricity.” Simiao points out that the pri nciple used by his company’s prototype is the same one used by fish to propel forward. - Full Article Source ITEM #82 08/23/11 - Capitalism vs Socialism Interesting way to explain the difference - Think about this... An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student, but had once failed an entire class. "All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A." After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who had studied hard were upset while the students who had studied very little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who had studied little studied even less and the ones who had studied hard decided that since they couldn't make an A, they also studied less. The second Test average was a D. No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average grade was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling, all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. To their great surprise all failed. The professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder people try to succeed the greater their reward (capitalism) but when a government takes all the reward away (socialism) no one will try or succeed. - from a friend ITEM #83 08/23/11 - IBM Chief: All CEOs Reluctant To Invest In R&D "In his Centennial Conversation at the Computer History Museum, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano emphasized the importance of investing in R&D, even in a down economy. 'Shareholder expectations for higher returns don't diminish when the economy stutters,' said Sam. 'And yet, Tom Watson Sr. actually increased research investment during the Great Depression.' CEO Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts - "And I’m saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all o f us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the comp anies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on t he side in America. You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it’s not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government an d there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth. Palmisano added, 'I will tell you that my own instinctive reflex isn't to continue investing $6 billion a year during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In that regard, I'm like all CEOs.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #84 08/23/11 - The true nature of batteries Typical battery health meters are chemistry- or application-specific and depend on simple, non-invasive and passive measurements such as voltage, current, and temperature. A new invention called the Impedance Measurement Box (IMB) supplies two key but pre viously ignored metrics: pulse resistance and power capability. The IMB, a product of Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, directly measures a wideband impedance spectrum in seconds during battery operation with no significant impact on service life. I t can be applied to batteries prior to installation, confirming health before entering active service; and during regular maintenance. The technology is based on hardware and proprietary control software that sends a low-level signal to the battery and ca ptures the battery response. An input signal is generated that consists of sinusoids, which are strategically separated by a known frequency spread and summed together. Then, this combined signal is injected into battery. The response is captured by a dat a acquisition system for the final steps: data processing and analysis, and display. The response signal is analyzed in about 10 sec with unique algorithms to determine the impedance. - Full Article Source ITEM #85 08/23/11 - Nano Solar Cells could kill cancer cells Solar energy company Spire Corp. today reported that it has been awarded a patent for a nanophotovoltaic device that the company says could be used to control or limit the growth of biological cells, such as cancer cells. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Off ice issued Spire U.S. Patent No. 7,955,965 entitled “Nanophotovoltaic Devices.” The company said the invention “provides Nano-PV devices having sizes in a range of about 50 nanometers to about 5 microns, and a method for their fabrication.” Spire said dev ice can target specific cells and selectively activate them by light to generate an electrical charge to kill or interfere with cell growth. - Full Article Source ITEM #86 08/23/11 - Sunvalley Solar Files Patent Sunvalley Solar, a solar power technology and solar system integration company, announced the filing of Patent Application Number 13198076 Titled Networked Solar Panels and Related Methods, which addresses challenges in the solar energy market. "With the increase in viability, popularity and availability of energy from solar systems it necessary to maintain the uniformity of the power supplied not only for the individual users but for the central power grids as well. Our invention will greatly reduce the adverse effect on the power grid system caused by unpredictable output power fluctuations, and make the solar technology much easier to be integrated with other types of energy sources," said Fang Xu, CTO of Sunvalley Solar, in a release dated Aug. 17. - Full Article Source ITEM #87 08/23/11 - No fossil fuel Energy Generator invention The Minister of Energy praised a new discovery pertaining to electric power generation and seawater desalination which does not require using any fossil, nuclear, solar, wind or coke fuel. Dr. Al-Ani presented his new invention to the Minister and pointed out that this invention does not exploit any organic fuels, is pollution-free and aims to reduce the cost of construction of electric power and water desalination plants as well as operational costs. He expressed his readiness to discuss his invention wi th all experts and manufacture a complete plant in Bahrain within a few months in cooperation with overseas companies. The Minister welcomed Dr. Qusai Al-Ani and expressed his readiness to cooperate with him and study this invention as the Electricity & W ater Authority’s policy welcomes and encourages such inventions and studies to harness electric power and make it available for consumers. - Full Article Source ITEM #88 08/23/11 - How paid FBI anti-terror informants lead “terrorist attacks” that FBI foils This is a yearlong investigation by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley explores the network of thousands of informants the FBI employs in its domestic counter-terrorism program, operating in gray area where the snitches do n't merely observe and report, but actively push their targets (in many cases hapless losers who never would have acted otherwise) to pursue their darkest fantasies. In the process, MoJo created a searchable database of 509 terror prosecutions - Full Article Source ITEM #89 08/23/11 - New Mexico Spaceport Nearly Ready For Business "I am sure many of us have heard about this story, but it looks like Spaceport America is finally ready to take off (no pun intended). The latest construction pictures [Note: database might be slightly flaky] are up to view. Want to be one of the first to take a ride? It will set you back $200,000. I don't know how many people will be able to afford such a trip, outside of Las Vegas, Hollywood, Cupertino, Redmond, and few retirees, but I suppose they are thinking that they can make their money back with t his project in the long term. Touring the space frontier seems a little steep. A lot of people are just trying to make living without being foreclosed on." - Full Article Source ITEM #90 08/23/11 - Most People Have Never Heard of CTRL+F "Google search anthropologist Dan Russell says that 90 percent of people in his studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page. 'I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's h ouse as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for,' says Russell, who has studied thousands of people on how they search for stuff. 'At the end I'll say to them, "Let me show one little trick here," and very often people will say, "I can't believe I've been wasting my life!"' Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we're looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL+F thing, says Alexis M adrigal. 'I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all,' writes Madrigal. 'We're talking about the future of almost all knowledge acquisition and yet schools don't spend nearly as much time on this ski ll as they do on other equally important areas.' - Full Article Source ITEM #91 08/23/11 - DIY Hand-Mounted Sonar For the Blind "The Tacit, a wrist-mounted sonar device with haptic feedback, is like strapping a bat to your wrist to help you see. It makes use of two sonar ping sensors to measure the distance to the nearest obstacle. The relative distance to an object is then fed ba ck to the user using two servos which apply pressure to the back of the wrist." / It's wrist mounted and senses objects from about 1 inch (2 cm) to 10 feet (3.5m). It has generally fast response time (fractions of a second) to quickly navigate complex en vironments. It's designed to help a vision impaired person to navigate complex environments. Mounted to the back of the hand, the force feedback means it doesn't interfere with other assistance devices that mount elsewhere and use audio feedback cues. Th e learning curve is measured in seconds, everyone who has worn it has figured it out immediately. The cost of materials in the prototype is around $65USD retail - Full Article Source ITEM #92 08/23/11 - Web Surfing At Work Can Boost Productivity "The Wall Street Journal reports on a study into productivity and efficiency in the workplace, which found that people who are given a break to surf the web return to their work with 'lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagem ent.' Researchers tested against two other groups; one continued working, and one was given a break that did not involve web browsing. They concluded that 'browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function.' In contrast, dealing with personal email was 'particularly distracting.' In the end, the researchers recommended that employers loosen restrictions on employee web access." - Full Article Source ITEM #93 08/23/11 - When Schools Are the Police "The Washington Post has an article on school systems with their own police forces. It focuses on Texas, which has the highest number of 'School Police Departments,' of which there are so many they have their own trade association. Highlights: 1) Houston fourth-grader stood on a stool so he could see the judge. He pleaded guilty. To a scuffle on a school bus. 2) 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009, to students as young as 5. 3) Austin middle school student ticketed after she sprayed herself with perfu me when classmates said she smelled. 4) a 17-year-old was in court after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other. 'She was mad at me because I broke up with her,' he said. I waiting for the Alamo Heights Special Airborne Brigade and SEAL TEAM CROC KETT." - Full Article Source ITEM #94 08/23/11 - After Rick Perry's Stem Cell Treatment, Misplaced Enthusiasm? "Presidential candidate Rick Perry underwent a controversial stem-cell treatment this past month, prompting some doctors to fear the high-profile event would send the wrong signal to desperate patients. "As a highly influential person of power, Perry's ac tions have the unfortunate potential to push desperate patients into the clinics of quacks,"Dr. George Q. Daley said." / In attempts to fix a bad back, doctors removed some of Perry's fat cells, cultured them in a lab and then injected them back into his spine and bloodstream. Some think stem cells isolated from fat could someday be used to generate soft tissue and bone and perhaps even help in the treatment of ailments such as heart disease. - Full Article Source ITEM #95 08/23/11 - Even if its not true, its Priceless! - Thanks Dorothy! ITEM #96 08/23/11 - Solar panel 'trees' are in fact inferior There’s been a lot of stories about arranging solar panels to mimic leaves on a tree, thereby boosting their efficiency. But before reading that story you might want to check out this blog post correcting some flaws in that breakthrough (page is down, her e’s a cached version). Before we go any further, we’d like to point out that the original work was done by a seventh grader. He looked at leaves on trees and postulated that the Fibonacci sequence can be found in the layout of leaves, and that by laying o ut solar cells in the same way you can capture more sunlight. Comments can get negative fast around here, so remember that trashing his work may discourage other kids from participating in science fair events. Anyway, long story short: there were some iss ues with original assumptions, and about what was actually being measured during testing. The article linked at the top covers the fact that the cells were not measured under load, and that simple calculations can show why the tree-mimicking-cell-placemen t can be proven sub-optimal to 45 degree, south-facing solar farms. - Full Article Source ITEM #97 08/20/11 - 13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough 7th grader Aidan Dwyer, who used phyllotaxis — the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature — as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels in a way that generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array. Aidan wrote, "I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible. ... The Fibonacc i tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the s ky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!"His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design. - Full Article Source ITEM #98 08/20/11 - The dark side of solar and wind power projects Accidents involving wind turbines alone have tripled in the last decade, and watchdog groups fear incidents could skyrocket further — placing more workers and even bystanders in harm's way — because a surge in projects requires hiring hordes of new and of ten inexperienced workers. Last year, the solar industry grew 67% and doubled its employment in the U.S. to 100,000 workers, according to the Solar Energy Industries Assn. The wind industry supports more than 75,000 jobs. Many wind turbine technicians wor k in a bathroom-size space 20 stories above ground surrounded by high-voltage electrical equipment. Some inspect turbine blades while suspended alongside them, on sites whipped by strong winds. Components can weigh more than 90 tons. Technicians have fall en hundreds of feet; others have been crushed by wayward parts or trapped in twisting machinery. Pilots in small planes have crashed into the towers. Electrical explosions last year left a worker in Illinois with third-degree burns and two others in San D iego County with similar injuries. Workers could asphyxiate inside turbine enclosures or inhale harmful gases and vapors when buffing and resurfacing blades, the Department of Labor cautions. Fires atop wind towers have scattered burning debris, according to neighbors, who also describe hastily built wind installations collapsing within months and harsh weather conditions exacerbating wear and tear. The complicated wiring under solar panels has left some firefighters so bewildered that they have allowed r esidential rooftops to burn. Some panels contain materials such as cadmium and selenium, which could be explosive or even carcinogenic, according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Panel parts can also be flammable or prone to melting, or torn off in storms or cracked by hail, testing experts said. - Full Article Source ITEM #99 08/20/11 - Sooner, Not Later: Interstellar Voyages a Reality? Projections for the first interstellar voyages, based on extrapolations of our current technological state and current investment into space exploration, will almost always place such missions hundreds of years into the future. Broadly speaking, there are three areas of possible 'disruption' that might fast-forward humankind's first exploration of another star system. Using the 'Sabre' engine, Skylon would require much less propellant than any conventional rocket, and would reduce launch costs by about 23 times, making access to space far cheaper and, possibly, ushering in a new era of exploration as the technology is adopted. This is just one example of many "disruptive technologies" that would provide us with cheap and easy access to space. Possibly the most exciting examples of 'easy space access' is the Space Elevator concept, popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel 'The Fountains of Paradise.' The central idea behind a Space Elevator involves lowering a cable -- perhaps constructed from asteroid material -- from geostationary Earth orbit to the surface of the Earth. The cable would connect with some point on Earth located at the equator, and would allow mass to be transferred to orbit using electricity instead of rocket fuel. Prices for space ac cess would be approximately $100 per pound, or about 100 times cheaper than conventional launch systems. Skylon, the Space Elevator and other pioneering technologies are receiving serious attention within the space community and any breakthroughs over the coming decades would profoundly change our attitudes toward space exploration. The real Holy Grail for an interstellar mission will be breakthroughs in our ability to harness thermonuclear energy -- namely fusion. Nuclear fusion is what powers all Main S equence stars in the universe, and efforts to exploit this energy have been ongoing for decades. Once fusion is better understood, and is being harnessed routinely, it's a small leap to apply that technology for propulsion purposes. Pound for pound, fusio n releases about one million times more energy than conventional chemical rocket fuel, and could conceivably propel a spacecraft to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, and produce an interstellar rocket that could reach a nearby star on timescale s of a human lifetime. - Full Article Source ITEM #100 08/20/11 - Carbon Recycling: Mining the Air for Fuel Recycling carbon dioxide is a great deal more involved than setting out separate bins for glass, aluminum, and paper. But many scientists believe that it is not only worth the effort, but a crucial endeavor. The climate change threat to the planet is now so great, they argue, that any effort to address the problem will have to include so-called "carbon negative" technologies. That means actually sucking the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and doing something productive with it. The idea of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal power plants or oil facilities and storing it underground has gotten plenty of attention. Several pilot projects are operating or under construction, although a major project in West Virginia was abandoned last month due to cost concerns. There has been less focus on the idea of actually reusing or recycling CO2. But science has long known that it’s possible to recombine carbon from CO2 with hydrogen from water to make hydrocarbons—in other words, to make familiar fuels such as gasoline. The problem, ironically, has been that the process requires a lot of energy. But pioneering researchers and entrepreneurs argue the technology is close at hand for recycling CO2 back into fuel for use in today’s engines. It might even invo lve technology to absorb carbon dioxide directly out of the air, instead of out of coal plant flue gas. - Full Article Source< /b> ITEM #101 08/20/11 - Do You Want to Live Forever? Americans have become obsessed with the once esoteric topic of how to retard, suspend, or even reverse aging. Low-calorie diets, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, electronic scanning and uploading of the mind’s contents and powers, and the preservation of cadavers for ultimate revival are among the suggested antidotes. The book appears at first to examine two seemingly unconnected groups: the small band of upper-class Englishmen and -women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who sought proof that the mind persists after death, and a group of Bolshevik theorists and officials who aspired to re-engineer the species. For the Soviets, the goal was not communication with the hereafter but physical transformation on earth. The so-called God-builders of the late tsarist era, who believed that science could be harnessed to cheat death, were influenced by the Russian Orthodox mystic Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, who proposed reconstituting the bodies of all the earth’s dead and sending them into space to co lonize the universe. Upon Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, the revolutionary Leonid Krasin established the Immortalization Commission of the book’s title to plan Lenin’s mausoleum. The memorial, which was erected in Moscow’s Red Square, was not just a publ ic symbol of the dead leader’s continuing influence, but a laboratory for the conservation and eventual resurrection of his body and mind (though physical deterioration and invasive study of Lenin’s brain soon foreclosed that option). On a much grander sc ale, in Soviet hands the idea of overcoming death by remaking humanity became, Gray argues, an inspiration for human experimentation and eventually mass murder, which he recounts with bloody specificity. - Full Article Source ITEM #102 08/20/11 - The Balancing Act for Life Bear with me now, there IS a connection here between 3, 6, 9, the 'Keely Wave' and Rejuvenation. I will flesh all this out and make one or more new pages about it for Keelynet, but for now, just this brief layout. That being said...I love it when I find yet another correlation to the 'Keely Wave', ergo, push, balance and pull. In this case, rejuvenation... You see, the Garden of Eden was a protected lab environment, shielded from outside forces and contaminants, where 'the gods' could protect all their creations, monitor and control all aspe cts of their lives and activities. As long as they stayed in the Garden, as naked and ignorant gardeners and caretakers, all is well with 'the gods/ETs'. But outside the protected lab environment of the garden, many toxins such as deuterium exist as part of nature and they are found everywhere. Everytime an atomic bomb is exploded, more deuterium is released into the atmosphere and often combines with w ater to become 'heavy water'. There are multiple indications of many ancient atomic bomb explosions which further contaminated and increased the levels of deuterium in our environment. And which our ancestors and now we absorb through the air, our skin an d by ingestion in foods and liquids. Part of why human lifespans went from a 1,000 years down to our puny 70 years. Carbon, of which life on this planet is based and deuterium (d2o = deuterium oxide = heavy water) are used as 'neutron moderators' in atomi c reactors. That means they slow down the explosion and reduce the heat to acceptable levels for practical use, ergo, making steam from water. E=MC^ means energy is being produced from the devolution and dissociation of matter. If an atomic reactor is all owed to run rampant (go critical) it will explode as in an atomic bomb, but if quenched where the neutron emissions slow down the explosion, we get tremendous heat which makes steam to power turbines to make electricity. In order to slow down an atomic re action, we use 'neutron moderators' to quench the release of heat, so to speed up an atomic reaction, we heat it... Now in our body, I think Dr. Crile is correct, we have mitochondrial atomic reactors. When life on this planet was 'designed', the ratio of carbon to cells (each having mitochondrial reactors) was so balanced as to always provide just enough carbon so tha t the mitochondrial reactors put out enough heat to keep the body alive, healthy, growing and living for possibly thousands of years. The longer you live, the bigger you get, 'giants in the earth' and all that. There are reports of people living to be 10, 000 years of age but they were giants. Many giant skeletons (some with giant armor and clothing to fit them) have been found and hidden away or destroyed... With regard to health and rejuvenation, I find it delightful to find the 'Keely Wave' evidenced in biology, the 'push, balance or pull' effects that rule everything; Balancing the amount of carbon (as neutron moderator) with the number of cells produces j ust the perfect amount of extra heat (from mitochondrial atomic reactors) for growth and healthy life as we experience from birth to about the age of 20. About the age of 20, based on this planets gravity, magnetic field strength and what all we have inge sted in our bodies up to this point, we are in a near perfect state of health and energy. If we could remain in this 'balanced' state, there would be no limit to our span of life. This is what the 'water of life' or eating of the 'tree of life' would gran t us. Controlled apoptosis (cell death), increased energy and the expulsion of dead and dying tissue, toxins and all bodies foreign to our body..all working together to regrow and sustain a healthy, energetic 20 year old physical body. If we have too little carbon, our mitochondrial reactors are allowed to release too much heat, this causes excess energy and is used by the body (Push) to accelerate growth as we see from birth until about 20 years of age. As we approach 20, the carbon more accurately balances the mitochondrial reactor heat which puts us in a state of balance. Taking this rapid release of energy to an most extreme state, with very little carbon to quench the atomic explosions, Spontaneous human combustion can occur where the body burns u p from within in a matter of minutes. I should mention the 'Wigner Effect' where pockets or potholes or knots occur in crystalline structures, acting like heat condensers which can store extremely large amounts of heat that can be released 'spontaneously' and without warning or control. That means th e body could store pockets of concentrated heat which could randomly explode (or be triggered by various means), releasing incredible amounts of heat that would consume the body as we see with spontanenous human combustion. Too much carbon would cool down our mitochondrial reactors, reduce our energy and heat to produce one of two states, normal aging which infects us all to live a life of approximiately 70 years...or with excessive carbon to sufficiently quench the reactors , our heat and energy levels would be SO LOW as to permit, on a massive, systemic level, all kinds of faulty replication of cells, accumulation of toxins as well as 'dead and dying' tissues that we would experience Progeria like effects, rapid aging and death. Therefore, we have carbon as our natural, inbuilt neutron moderator, ideally kept in BALANCE with the volume of cells with their mitochondrial reactors to keep us at the perfectly optimized body form of a 20 year old AS LONG as we were in the protected lab environment called the 'Garden of Eden.' My premise is we could intentionally revert back to a 20 year old body and take further steps, now that we have fully rejuvenated, to stay in balance and in perfect health for as long as we wish to stay alive, as by the original design, which did not a llow for additional neutron moderation other than from carbon. I think it's worth investigating and would love to do it with some talented associates. Imagine, a Cure for Aging! - Full Article Source ITEM #103 08/20/11 - Boomers Will Be Pumping Billions Into Anti-Aging Industry Baby boomers heading into what used to be called retirement age are providing a 70 million-member strong market for legions of companies, entrepreneurs and cosmetic surgeons eager to capitalize on their "forever young" mindset, whether it's through wrinkl e creams, face-lifts or workout regimens. It adds up to potential bonanza. The market research firm Global Industry Analysts projects that a boomer-fueled consumer base, "seeking to keep the dreaded signs of aging at bay," will push the U.S. market for an ti-aging products from about $80 billion now to more than $114 billion by 2015. Anti-aging enthusiasts contend that life spans can be prolonged through interventions such as hormone replacement therapy and dietary supplements. Critics, including much of t he medical establishment, say many anti-aging interventions are ineffective or harmful. "If someone is promising you today that you can slow, stop or reverse aging, they're likely trying hard to separate you from your money," said S. Jay Olshansky, a prof essor at the University of Illinois-Chicago's School of Public Health who has written extensively about aging. "It's always the same message: `Aging is your fault and we've got the cure,'" Olshansky said. "Invest in yourself, in the simple things we know work. Get a good pair of running or walking shoes and a health club membership, and eat more fruits and vegetables." The disabilities associated with normal aging "are caused by physiological dysfunction which in many cases are ameliorable to medical trea tment, such that the human life span can be increased. (Keep in mind these are mostly cosmetic treatments that don't actually address the CAUSES of AGING. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #104 08/20/11 - Short Sleep During Daytime Promotes Learning Russian researchers found out that short daytime sleep helped settle words into memory. Scientists from the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology performed tests of a group of male and female human beings. Two groups learned 60 pairs of words, not connected by sense, then after tests they learned 30 more pairs. After lunch, one group had 1-hour long sleep in a noise-protected room, and another watched movies about nature. After sleep, first group also watched movies. Both groups tried s leeping and watching in their turns. Tests showed that volunteers better learned words, which were repeated only once. This may indicate that short sleep during daytime helps put into memory things that were not learned good enough. - Full Article Source ITEM #105 08/20/11 - Flaxseed might protect against death from radiation Mice that ate flaxseed either before or up to six weeks after receiving a large radiation dose to the chest were more likely to survive and had fewer lung problems than mice not given flaxseed. Four months after receiving radiation, up to 88 percent of mi ce that ate flaxseed were still alive, compared with just 40 percent of mice who did not eat flaxseed. - Full Article Source ITEM #106 08/20/11 - 4,000 mph underwater trans-atlantic train Despite a 5 hour time difference you could have lunch in Manhattan and still get to London in time for the theater with the help of a 4,000 mph magnetically levitated train. Supersonic speeds require another critical step: eliminating the air—and therefor e air friction—from the train’s path. A vacuum would also save the tunnel from the destructive effects of a sonic boom, which, unchecked, could potentially rip the tunnel apart.” “As envisioned by Frankel and Frank Davidson, a former MIT researcher and ea rly member of the first formal English Channel Tunnel study group, sections of neutrally buoyant tunnel submerged 150 to 300 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic, then anchored to the seafloor–thereby avoiding the high pressures of the deep ocean. The n air would be pumped out, creating a vacuum, and alternating magnetic pulses would propel a magnetically levitated train capable of speeds up to 4,000 mph across the pond in an hour. - Full Article Source ITEM #107 08/20/11 - 83% of American adults own cell phones Cell phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information seeking and communicating and these devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. In a nationally representative telephone survey, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & A merican Life Project found that, during the 30 days preceding the interview: - Full Article Source ITEM #108 08/20/11 - Possibility of Temporarily Reversing Aging in the Immune System Until now, aging in immune cells was thought to be largely determined by the length of special caps on the ends of our DNA. These caps, called telomeres, get shorter each time a white blood cell multiplies until, when they get too short, the cell gets per manently deactivated. This means that our immune cells have a built-in lifespan of effectiveness and, as we live longer, this no longer long enough to provide us protection into old age. However when Professor Akbar's team took some blood samples and look ed closely at the white blood cells they saw that some were inactive and yet had long telomeres. This told the researchers that there must be another mechanism in the immune system causing cells to become deactivated that was independent of telomere lengt h. When the researchers blocked this newly identified pathway in the lab they found that the white blood cells appeared to be reactivated. Medicines which block this pathway are already being developed and tested for use in other treatments so the next st ep in this research is to explore further whether white blood cells could be reactivated in older people, and what benefits this could bring. - Full Article Source ITEM #109 08/20/11 - CNY man’s invention makes mowing the lawn hassle free A Central New York man thinks he has come up with a solution for all the toil associated with cutting the grass: an automatic lawnmower. From the steering to the cutting, Doug Heffron's invention does it all. The mower can even be left alone for lengths a t a time. Wire, installed about an inch deep in the ground guides the seated John Deere mower through a sensor, which is connected to the steering. "On a repeatable trip on the wire, it will follow the wire within a quarter inch, so it's very accurate," H effron said. The mower also has a built-in safety feature – sensors in the front that will automatically shut the machine down if it goes off course. "Or if it deviates from the wire, which I've never had happen, but if it goes off the wire anywhere withi n two inches, it will shut down," Heffron said. Heffron's invention received some attention from John Deere when he initially devised it in the late 1980s. The interest never developed further, however. Since then, Heffron has upgraded to a new mower and improved the wiring technology. - Full Article Source ITEM #110 08/20/11 - Con man asks Rhode Island to help him appeal conviction A former Rhode Island art dealer who has posed as a Secret Service agent, peddled an invention promising to convert rocks to rubies, and orchestrated a $6 million con is claiming to be a pauper who needs the government to foot the bill for him to appeal h is latest criminal conviction. Rocco P. DeSimone, 58, has led a roller-coaster life, once listing treasures as varied as elephant tusks, a first edition of “To Kill a Mockingbird,’’ and a John Singer Sargent drawing in court filings, but he has perhaps co me to its nadir: Court records recently counted $46.25 in his prison commissary account. - Full Article Source ITEM #111 08/20/11 - An Apollo astronaut on political quagmires Fix it or get out and let others come in to fix it. - Full Article Source ITEM #112 08/20/11 - Drug found to rejuvenate the 'power plant' of your cells to youthful levels Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have found a protein normally involved in blood pressure regulation in a surprising place: tucked within the little 'power plants' of cells, the mitochondria. The quantity of this protein appe ars to decrease with age, but treating older mice with the blood pressure medication losartan can increase protein numbers to youthful levels, decreasing both blood pressure and cellular energy usage. The researchers say these findings point the way to ne w treatments for mitochondrial–specific age-related diseases like diabetes, hearing loss, frailty and Parkinson's disease. 'We've identified a functional and independently operated system that appears to influence energy regulation within the mitochondria ,' explains Jeremy Walston, M.D., professor of geriatric medicine at Hopkins. 'This mitochondrial angiotensin system is activated by commonly utilized blood pressure medications, and influences both nitric oxide and energy production when signaled.' / Exp lains Walston, "Activating angiotensin receptors within the mitochondria with these agents led to lowered blood pressure and decreased cellular energy use." But they found even more than just an energy-regulating mechanism; after testing the angiotensin s ystem in mitochondria of both young and old mice, they noticed a decrease by almost a third of the amount of the angiotensin receptor type 2 in the mitochondria in older mice, meaning that cells in older mice were unable to control energy use as well. The researchers then tried treating these older mice with the blood pressure lowering drug losartan daily for 20 weeks and found that the number of these receptors increased. "Treatment of the old mice with losartan resulted in a marked increase in the numbe r of receptors that are known to positively influence blood pressure and decrease inflammation," says Walston. Declining mitochondria are known to influence chronic diseases in older adults, explains Walston, whose next step is to translate studies from c ell culture and animal based studies to human studies in hopes of developing new therapies. - Full Article Source ITEM #113 08/20/11 - UCLA Engineers Create Energy-Generating LCD Screen "Engineers at UCLA have developed technology that allows gadgets like smartphones and laptops to convert sunlight, ambient light, and their own backlight into energy. Equipping LCD-enhanced devices with so-called polarizing organic photovoltaics will reco up battery loads of lost power, and enable smartphone users to scour Yelp, scan Twitter, and update their Facebook page without fear of draining the charge before a real communication crisis arises." - Full Article Source ITEM #114 08/20/11 - Company Wants You to Visit Near-Space In Their "Bloon" "While space tourism efforts by the likes of Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic are relying on the tried and true technology of rockets to launch paying customers into space, Barcelona-based company zero2infinity proposes a more leisurely and eco-friend ly ride into near-space using a helium balloon called the bloon. Designed to carry passengers to an altitude of 36 km (22 miles), an unmanned scale prototype bloon was flown to an altitude of 33 km (20 miles) last year and the company is already taking bo okings for passenger flights that are expected to lift off sometime between 2013 and 2015." - Full Article Source ITEM #115 08/20/11 - DARPA To Sponsor R&D For Interstellar Travel "The government agency that helped invent the Internet now wants to do the same for travel to the stars. In what is perhaps the ultimate startup opportunity, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, plans to award some lucky, ambitious and st ar-struck organization roughly $500,000 in seed money to begin studying what it would take — organizationally, technically, sociologically and ethically — to send humans to another star, a challenge of such magnitude that the study alone could take a hund red years." / People like Dr. Tziolas say the technology already exists or will soon exist to send instruments and perhaps even people to nearby stars, although a human flight could cost hundred of trillions of dollars. The half-million dollars Darpa will award is not enough to build a starship or even to buy a modest office in which to imagine one — but it is enough to start serious fund-raising and, perhaps to invite ridicule from critics of government spending. An actual human launching is at least a c ouple of centuries away and, barring the invention of Star Trek-like warp drives, could take additional centuries to complete. Whoever goes on such a journey will not be coming back. - Full Article Source ITEM #116 08/20/11 - Computer Prediction Used to Design Better Organic Semiconductors "Creating a flexible display requires finding an organic material that's both durable and capable of carrying an electric signal fast enough. To create such a material requires choosing the right compound and combining it with an organic base material. It 's a hit and miss affair that can take years of synthesis to get right, but even then the final material may not be good enough. Stanford and Harvard researchers have come up with a much faster solution: use computer prediction to decide on the best compo und before synthesizing begins. They also proved it works by developing a new organic semiconductor material 30x faster than the amorphous silicon used in LCDs." - Full Article Source ITEM #117 08/20/11 - DHS Tries To Hide Mobile Scanner Details "The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year (PDF) with the US Department of Homeland Security, whose Transportation Security Administration has been investigating the use of x-ray scanning technology for covert use in more public places, like train stations and even ordinary city streets. TSA has tested interesting devices like the Z Backscatter Vans both privately and on members of the general public. EPIC recently received new documents from DHS. Some of the documents are almost completely black from redactions." - Full Article Source ITEM #118 08/20/11 - What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind? "In a study carried out by NASA and Pennsylvania State University scientists, several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hellbent on destroying us? H owever, there's a twist. This isn't mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they're not killing us to get at our natural resources; they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way." / Yes, they consider us cockr oaches. Cockroaches left in charge of increasingly advanced and destructive technology. Let's face it, with ecosystem destruction on a global scale and greenhouse gases being belched out into the atmosphere at record rates, to a distant alien observer we may look like a destructive civilization spiraling out of control -- and they wouldn't be far wrong. Therefore, as the ET logic may go, if we're making such a mess of our own back yard, if we venture deeper into space and become a true interstellar civili zation, what hope is there that we'll treat the rest of the galaxy (and the other beings in it) with any respect? As noted by the Guardian, their entry requirements into a hypothetical Interstellar Rotary Club may be wrapped in bureaucratic red tape, maki ng the whole "alien encounter experience" a bore. Said aliens may even just turn up unannounced, "District 9"-style, and impose on our planet like a friend's sofa. They might be content just eating snacks and watching our TV. - Full Article Source ITEM #119 08/20/11 - RKK Energia Confirms Private Trip To the Moon "RKK Energia, the prime contractor for the Russian space program and the company who builds the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, recently confirmed negotiations are underway with space tourism company Space Adventures for a privately financed crewed flight aroun d the Moon. While the offer and purchase of at least one seat has been discussed earlier, this is the first time Energia has confirmed the negotiations and has gone into at least some details in terms of what they are expecting to have happen with this fl ight and the approximate timeframe for when this flight would take place: sometime in 2016 or 2017." - Full Article Source ITEM #120 08/20/11 - Canadian Library to Loan Out People Wouldn't it be easier to learn Chinese from a native speaker than from a book, or explore a religion from an actual practitioner rather than words on a page? A library in Surrey, B.C. thinks so and has introduced a "human library" program. Visitors will b e able to "check-out" real people to learn about their experiences and specific knowledge. From the article: "...The goal is to break down stereotypes and start discussions, said deputy chief librarian Melanie Houlden. 'What we're aiming to do is bring th e library to life for people. There are huge repositories of experience and knowledge in their own brains,' she said." As long as you stay out of the horror section, this sounds like a great idea. - Full Article Source ITEM #121 08/20/11 - The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars "Bill Snyder warns that the tech patent wars are going nuclear, and could vaporize tech jobs in the process. He likens the situation to medicine, where so much money now goes to pay for insurance and 'defensive medicine,' rather than for actual care. In t he tech world, he fears that the same will occur with patents, forcing companies to spend ever more money on patents and lawyers — and less on innovation and staff." - Full Article Source ITEM #122 08/20/11 - American Grant Writing: Race Matters "You might expect that science, particularly American science, would be color-blind. Though fewer people from some of the country's ethnic minorities are scientists than the proportions of those minorities in the population suggest should be the case, onc e someone has got bench space in a laboratory, he might reasonably expect to be treated on merit and nothing else. Unfortunately, a study just published in Science suggests that is not true. The study looked at the pattern of research grants awarded by th e NIH and found that race matters a lot. Moreover, Asian and Hispanic scientists do just as well as white ones. Black scientists, however, fare badly." - Full Article Source ITEM #123 08/20/11 - Sun May Disrupt Spacecraft and Satellites In Coming Decades "A newly published study (abstract) predicts that solar storms are going to become increasingly disruptive to satellites and communications in the coming decades as the sun cycles towards a minimum of activity. 'The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts toward an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth. The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum. This phase began in the 1920s — and has lasted throughout the space age....The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #124 08/20/11 - Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests "A number of car makers are looking at whether EEG devices built into headrests could prevent accidents by sensing when a driver is in danger of drifting off. The technology comes from Neurosky, which already makes commercial EEG units for use in gaming a nd market research. Other approaches, such as using cameras to spot drooping eyelids, have proven too unreliable so far. From the story: 'Fatigue causes more than 100,000 crashes and 40,000 injuries, and around 1,550 deaths, per year in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Some studies suggest drowsiness is involved in 20 to 25 percent of all crashes on monotonous stretches of road.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #125 08/20/11 - Study Shows Dogs Can Sniff Out Lung Cancer "Last year, researchers developed a cancer-detecting electronic nose inspired by dogs' ability to sniff out different types of ovarian cancer. Now a new study has found that sniffer dogs' abilities extend to reliably detecting lung cancer. The researchers say the results of the study (abstract) confirm that there is a stable marker for lung cancer, which offers the possibility that a 'breath test' for the early detection of lung cancer could be developed." - Full Article Source ITEM #126 08/20/11 - Rare Earth Restrictions To Raise Hard Drive Cost "Multiple manufacturers in the IT industry have been keeping a wary eye on China's decision to cut back on rare earth exports and the impact it may have on component prices. There have been reports that suggest we'll see that decision hit the hard drive i ndustry this year, with HDD prices trending upwards an estimated 5-10 percent depending on capacity. Although rare earth magnets are only a small part of a hard drive's total cost, China cut exports last year by 40 percent, which drove pricing for these p articular components up an estimated 20-30x. China currently controls 97 percent of the rare earth elements market for popular metals like neodymium, cerium, yttrium and ytterbium." - Full Article Source ITEM #127 08/17/11 - Cutting Edge Tech Slated For Next Mars Rover "NASA is pushing the boundaries of technology as it readies its next mission to Mars, loading up its 4th Mars Rover with nearly a dozen instruments and deploying an innovative but risky landing procedure. Scientists and engineers were piecing together som e of the final components to the new rover, dubbed Curiosity, on Saturday as it ramps up for a high-stakes launch in November." / Scientists and engineers were piecing together some of the final components to the new rover, dubbed Curiosity, on Saturday a s it ramps up for a high-stakes launch in November. The $2.5-billion-dollar rover is more advanced than the Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity that roamed the Red Planet in past years. Curiosity will house a fully fledged science laboratory that can perfo rm real-time tests on the planet, making it the most sophisticated unmanned spacecraft ever built. It is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. (Imagine, (depending on orbit 10-20 minutes) the median is 15 minutes to get a signal there, 15 minutes to get it back, think how many weeks it takes to move that little robot car just a couple of feet? Their cutting edge doesn't even know there are at least two ways for INSTANTANEOUS communication over we suspect INFINITE DISTANCES with possibly UNLIMITED bandwidth...but no one will fund me and my associates to develop this technology and much more, pathetic. Anyone should realize we need much faster communication technology than 15 minutes EACH WAY... $2.5 BILLION, yet not a dime for superior communication technology that would revolution the entire communication indu stry. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #128 08/17/11 - List of inventors killed by their own inventions This is a list of inventors whose deaths were in some manner caused by or related to a product, process, procedure, or other innovation that they invented or designed. # Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari (died ca. 1003–1010), a Muslim Kazakh Turkic scholar fro m Farab, attempted to fly using two wooden wings and a rope. He leapt from the roof of a mosque in Nijabur and fell to his death.[2] Wan Hu, a sixteenth-century Chinese official, is said to have attempted to launch himself into outer space in a chair to w hich 47 rockets were attached. The rockets exploded and, it is said, neither he nor the chair were ever seen again. # James Heselden (1948–2010), owner of the Segway production company, died in a Segway accident. Dean Kamen invented the Segway.[27] * Will iam Bullock (1813–1867) invented the web rotary printing press.[9][10] Several years after its invention, his foot was crushed while installing a new machine in Philadelphia. The crushed foot developed gangrene and Bullock died during the amputation.[11] - Full Article Source ITEM #129 08/17/11 - Paul Krugman: save the economy by staging an alien invasion hoax Think about World War II -- that was actually negative social product spending and yet it brought us out... If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and bu dget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, "whoops, we made a mistake," we'd [still] be better... There was a Twilight Zone episode like this, in which scientists fake an alien threat in o rder to achieve world peace. Well, this time we need it to get some fiscal stimulus. - Full Article Source< /p> ITEM #130 08/17/11 - On the Effectiveness of CCTVs & Terrorism Paranoia Apropos this morning's Guardian column on the ineffectiveness of CCTV as deterrent to crime, here's Scotland Yard's study on the use of CCTVs in forensic crime-solving, which concluded that only one crime was solved per 1,000 CCTVs. The UK government spen ds hundreds of millions of pounds on CCTV -- perhaps that money would be better spent on evidence-led crime detection and prevention? - Full Article S ource ITEM #131 08/17/11 - Should you use public cell-phone charging kiosks? Beware of Juice-Jacking, warns security researcher Brian Krebs. Those cell-phone charging kiosks in airports and other public places amount to an "unknown device that could be configured to read most of the data on your phone, and perhaps even upload malw are." / “We’d been talking about how dangerous these charging stations could be. Most smartphones are configured to just connect and dump off data,” Markus said. “Anyone who had an inclination to could put a system inside of one of these kiosks that when someone connects their phone can suck down all of the photos and data, or write malware to the device.” To make their charging station more attractive to passersby, Markus and his pals equipped it with a variety of charging cables to fit the most popular wireless devices. When no device was connected, the LCD screen fitted into the charging station displayed a blue image with the words “Free Cell Phone Charging Kiosk.” The screen switched to a red warning sign when users plugged in any devices. The warnin g message read: “You should not trust public kiosks with your smart phone. Information can be retrieved or downloaded without your consent. Luckily for you, this station has taken the ethical route and your data is safe. Enjoy the free charge!” The safest route for charging your device on-the-go is to use the supplied power cord that plugs into a regular electrical outlet (assuming you can find an available outlet). Battery-powered mobile charging devices also work well in a pinch and are available at man y airports. If you must use a random charging kiosk, the safest option may be to completely power off the device before plugging it in. “One thing we discovered: On certain devices, if you power them completely off, then charge them, they don’t expose the data,” Markus said. - Full Article Source ITEM #132 08/17/11 - Backing up to a Hard Drive For those of you who don’t like the idea of backing stuff up online, there’s a two terabyte storage drive (that’s huge!) for $149 from Rebit.com. This comes with Rebit’s excellent backup software, which we’ve recommended before and use ourselves. A reader recently sent us a thank you note, saying it saved her butsky. To get the special price with the $40 savings, use the coupon code “BACK2SCHOOL” at checkout before August 31. - Full Article Source ITEM #133 08/17/11 - The Death of Booting Up "'Booting up was a bear,' recalls Slate's Farhad Manjoo, 'something to be avoided at all costs.' But now, he adds, 'It's time to rejoice, because all that's in the past. Computers these days can go from completely off to working within 30 seconds, and in some cases much faster. Apple's MacBook Air loads up in 16 seconds, and machines based on Google's cloud-based Chrome OS boast boot times of under 10 seconds. Even Windows computers are fast — with the right set-up, your Windows 7 laptop can load just as quickly as a MacBook.' Perhaps at home, but how's that working out for you at work? Have reports of the death of long boot times been greatly exaggerated?" - Full Article Source ITEM #134 08/17/11 - Which Company Is the Largest? "Apple and Exxon are fighting it out to be the company with the largest market cap. Tuesday, Apple pulled ahead. It is hard to believe a tech company can beat out an oil giant, but is the market cap really the measure of the size/influence of a company? I t is certainly the simplest metric to consider. Ars is running an excellent article on how to measure the size of a company. They discuss different metrics such as cash balance, revenue, number of employees, etc." - Full Article Source ITEM #135 08/17/11 - Mussels With Hydrogen Fuel Cells Found "According to scientists, there are mussels at the bottom of the ocean that are efficiently converting hydrogen into energy in their very own, nature-made hydrogen fuel cells (abstract). The mussels were found near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor an d have onboard symbiotic bacteria that convert hydrogen into energy. With this discovery, researchers might be able to clone the hydrogen eating bacteria to create all-natural hydrogen fuel cells to power things other than sea life." - Full Article Source ITEM #136 08/17/11 - Essex Police Arrest Man Over Blackberry Water Fight Plan "Under the banner headline 'Police reassure residents they are working to keep county safe,' Essex police proudly proclaimed that they arrested a 20-year-old man from Colchester who 'allegedly sent messages from a Blackberry encouraging people to join in a water fight.' Having also made a number of arrests of people sitting at home on Facebook, Acting Assistant Chief Constable Mason wrote: 'Police will continue to monitor social networking sites for unlawful activity.'" That's some good police work there, Lou. / The unnamed man has been charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said. He was arrested with another 20-year-old man the day the water fight was allegedly due to take place, a nd has been bailed to appear before Colchester magistrates on 1 September. The second man was released without charge. The BlackBerry Messenger service, a closed communications network, was the social network of choice for organising many raids on shops a nd businesses during last week's riots in England. A police spokesman declined to disclose whether Essex police had been monitoring the service since the riots. "Essex police use appropriate measures for whatever the crime and wherever our investigations lead us," he said. - Full Article Source ITEM #137 08/17/11 - Cop Seeks Wiretapping Charges For Woman Who Videotaped Beating "A police officer who was disciplined for his role in the beating of a Massachusetts man (many broken bones in his face and permanent partial blindness) is looking to bring criminal wiretapping charges against the woman who caught much of the incident on video. The officer received a 45-day suspension for the beating. He does not appear to deny anything that happened in the video, but he apparently thinks it shouldn't have been filmed." (How about some Star Chamber justice for this guy...give him a bea ting like he gave the guy and he'll not harass the woman who CAUGHT HIM breaking the law. Ergo, 'Texas would offer some “real ugly” frontier justice' for this twisted SERVANT of the PEOPLE! GO PERRY! - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #138 08/17/11 - The Post-Idea World "If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it's not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don't care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking id eas that can't instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé. ... There is the eclipse of the public intell ectual in the general media by the pundit who substitutes outrageousness for thoughtfulness, and the concomitant decline of the essay in general-interest magazines. And there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young — a fo rm in which ideas are more difficult to express. But these factors, which began decades ago, were more likely harbingers of an approaching post-idea world than the chief causes of it." - Full Article Source ITEM #139 08/17/11 - Yahoo, Facebook Test "Six Degrees of Separation" "Yahoo has partnered with Facebook to test the iconic social experiment known as 'six degrees of separation' (everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth). The goal of the Small World Experiment is to determine the s ocial path length between two strangers by tapping into the world's largest social network and its 750 million users, each of whom have an average of 130 friends." / The Small World Experiment is designed to test the hypothesis that anyone in the worl d can get a message to anyone else in just “six degrees of separation” by passing it from friend to friend. Sociologists have tried to prove (or disprove) this claim for decades, but it is still unresolved. Now, using Facebook we finally have the tech nology to put the hypothesis to a proper scientific test. By participating in this experiment, you’ll not only get to see how you’re connected to people you might never otherwise encounter, you will also be helping to advance the science of social network s. - Full Article Source ITEM #140 08/17/11 - 1 in 8 Take Fake Phone Calls to Avoid Talking to Others A survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that people are lying 13% of the time when they say they have to take a cell phone call around you. That number jumps to an inconsiderate 30% in the 18- to 29-year-old age group. The sur vey also found that 42% of the 18-to-29 group "have had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone nearby." - Full Article Source ITEM #141 08/17/11 - Floating Nuclear Power Plant Seized By Court "The world's first nuclear barge has been impounded while still under construction — but not because of looming safety or environmental concerns. The shipyard's parent companies are embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings, and Russia's state nuclear corporati on, Rosatom, was worried that a creditor would end up with this valuable nuclear asset, and asked the bankruptcy court to seize the barge to protect it." - Full Article Source ITEM #142 08/17/11 - Paypal Founder Helping Build Artificial Island Nations "PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters. Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nat ions on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties." - Full Article Source ITEM #143 08/17/11 - Santa Cruz Tests Predictive Policing Program The police department of Santa Cruz, California is testing a new method for apprehending criminals: beating them to the crime scene. No, they haven't harnessed a group of pre-cogs; they're relying on a computer program that analyzes past crime statistics. "Based on models for predicting aftershocks from earthquakes, it generates projections about which areas and windows of time are at highest risk for future crimes by analyzing and detecting patterns in years of past crime data. The projections are recali brated daily, as new crimes occur and updated data is fed into the program. ... For the Santa Cruz trial, eight years of crime data were fed into the computer program, which breaks Santa Cruz into squares of approximately 500 feet by 500 feet. ... Officer s are given a list of the 10 highest-probability 'hot spots' of the day at roll call. They check those areas during times that they are not out on service calls. Before the program started, they made such 'pass through' checks based on hunches or experien ce of where crimes were likely to occur." - Full Article Source ITEM #144 08/17/11 - Australian 'Electronic Pigeon Hole' Could Replace Gov't Snail Mail "Australia's federal Opposition will look to create a national government-funded 'electronic pigeon hole' for all Australians in an effort to cut the costs of 'snail mail' communication, if they are returned to power at the next election. According to Opp osition communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, the pigeon hole would effectively act as a life-long single source of storage for communications between each citizen and government. The service would be free for Australians in exchange for their agreein g to no longer receiver paper-based communications from government agencies and other related organizations." - Fu ll Article Source ITEM #145 08/17/11 - USPTO Issues 8,000,000th Patent "It took nearly 80 years for the first 1 million patents to issue in the U.S. On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued its eight-millionth patent. This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years." - Full Article Source ITEM #146 08/17/11 - How To Steal ATM PINs With a Thermal Camera "Researchers from UCSD have demonstrated how thermal imagery cameras can be used to steal customers' PINs (PDF) when you withdraw cash from ATMs. Their paper, entitled 'Heat of the Moment: Characterizing the Efficacy of Thermal Camera-Based Attacks', (PDF ) discovered that plastic PIN pads were the best for retaining heat signatures showing which numbers (and in which order) were used by bank customers. Fortunately the methodology does not appear to have been used by criminals yet, but a third of people su rveyed admit that they do not check ATMs for tampering before withdrawing cash." / Thermal imaging provides several advantages. Unlike with traditional cameras, visually masking the PIN pad does not defeat the attack, and the ability to automate PIN harve sting using computer software further simplifies the task. The researchers gathered 21 volunteers and had them test 27 randomly selected PIN numbers using both a plastic PIN pad and a brushed metal PIN pad. The strength of the participants' button presses and their body temperature were shown to affect the results to some degree. The researchers discovered that the metal pad made the attack nearly impossible to implement, but with the plastic PIN pad, it was even possible to determine from the heat signat ures not only the numbers pressed but also the number order. With the plastic PIN pad, the custom software the researchers wrote to automate the analysis had approximately an 80% success rate at detecting all digits from a frame 10 seconds after the perso n entered their PIN. The success rate was still over 60% using a frame 45 seconds after the PIN was entered. - Full Article Source ITEM #147 08/17/11 - NASA Shoots Down Comet Elenin Doomsday Predictions "The comet Elenin, which will pass by Earth October 16, has generated such an inordinate amount of doomsday reports from a number of different sources that NASA today issued a release meant to address a variety of them. To address the myriad concerns, NAS A said its scientists compiled a list of the most popular questions it has received about Elenin." - Full Article Source ITEM #148 08/17/11 - MABEL Robot Runs Like a Human "Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a running, obstacle-scaling robot. This robot, which is called MABEL (not an acronym), is capable of running at speeds of up to 3.06 meters per second, or 6.8 mph. Physically she is very similar to a human — a heavy torso, and light, springed legs that act as load balancers and shock absorbers — and with a clever feedback system, MABEL even runs like a human, spending 40% of her time three or four inches off the ground." (Why even release this sin ce the robot is 'tethered'? It's like the flying car trolls showing their fan powered disc suspended from a crane, that ain't flight, its puppetry. When they are standalone, THAT'S news. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #149 08/17/11 - Malicious Spam Spikes To 'Epic' Level "There has been a huge spike in spam volume in the last few days, including a massive amount of malicious spam with infected attachments, and researchers say that levels of junk mail are now far higher than they were before the takedown of the notorious S pamit affiliate program last fall. The huge spike comes at a time when spam should, in fact, be dropping because of the takedown of the Rustock botnet, the Spamit network and other botnets. 'From the beginning of August, we have observed a huge surge of m alicious spam which far exceeds anything we have seen over the past two years, including prior to the SpamIt takedown last October. The majority of the malicious spam comes from the Cutwail botnet, although Festi and Asprox are among the other contributor s,' M86 researcher Rodel Mendrez said." - Full Article Source ITEM #150 08/14/11 - A Ferrofluid-Based Free Energy Device to Experiment with Someone got my attention these days with a device supposed to produce energy by using ferrofluids. He called this device “Continuous Friction Motion Machine,” and the energy generated would be dead cheap. As many of you know, ferrofluids are liquids – an extremely fine powder, coated with a soap-like material called a surfactant, suspended in a mineral oil liquid base. This means that if you place them in a magnetic field, they’ll move towards the magnet. Theoretically, it looks that from this idea to har vesting the energy of magnets there’s only one step left. What we need for the experiment: two magnets shaped like in the picture, two tubes thin enough to generate capillary action for the ferrofluid and of course, a ferrofluid. The setup should look som ething like in the diagram. The basic idea is that, by using capillary action we could move a ferrofluid between those two walls through capillarity, and at the end of the thin tube thus created we should exert a magnetic force, that will get the ferroflu id attracted to the second magnet, where it would move downwards, towards the second capillary tube. The invention’s author says that by generating mechanical work and thermal energy through friction we could virtually produce free energy, or at least som ething we could call “free,” from the magnets’ own fields. - Full Article Source ITEM #151 08/14/11 - 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars "Thorium, an abundant and radioactive rare earth mineral, could be used in conjunction with a laser and mini turbines to easily produce enough electricity to power a vehicle. When thorium is heated, it generates further heat surges, allowing it to be coup led with mini turbines to produce steam that can then be used to generate electricity. Combining a laser, radioactive material, and mini-turbines might sound like a complicated alternative solution to filling your gas tank, but there's one feature that se lls it as a great alternative solution: 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent energy of 7,500 gallons of gasoline." - Fu ll Article Source ITEM #152 08/14/11 - Andrea Rossi's E-Cataclysm? When (or IF?) low energy nuclear reaction takes place in the form of the Rossi-Focardi E-Catalyst, it won't be in Greece. That much is certain after Andrea Rossi and Defkalion decided to go their separate ways on August 4, 2011. Owned by Cyprus-based Prax en, Defkalion Green Technologies had planned to hold a demonstration of a 1MW generator based on the E-Cat, supposedly is the first commercially-viable LENR energy device. Why the split? Neither party has said, but current speculation is that Defkalion ra n out of money and couldn't meet their contractual obligations. Defkalion admits that there has been "very strong international pressure and to many degrees business traps from banks, financial partners, etc. to cancel the project." Presumably, this envir onment may have made it difficult for them to raise the funds they needed. In the meantime, Rossi has now found a U.S. partner who is funding E-Cat development. The planned demonstration in Greece in October will now, according to personal correspondence between Rossi and EV World, take place in the United States. Who the new investor is isn't known at this time, but since Rossi is now living in Florida, we could presume the investor is also located there and that the demonstration may also take place the re, but this is just speculation at this time. So, it would seem that the situation isn't as dire as it first appeared over the weekend. Rossi sounds confident that he is still on track to demonstrate his E-Cat device this fall and has now found an Americ an partner with deeper pockets than Defkalion, but he is also obviously exasperated by the attention the split has generated... - Full Article Source ITEM #153 08/14/11 - Shinji Saito, World YoYo Champion The most incredibly precise dance with two yo-yos, worth watching, sheer beauty, harmony and rhythm. - Full Article Source ITEM #154 08/14/11 - CERN Physicist Says Dark Matter May Be an Illusion "A CERN physicist has a new theory explaining the rotational curves of galaxies. 'The key message of my paper is that dark matter may not exist and that phenomena attributed to dark matter may be explained by the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum,' Hajdukovic told PhysOrg.com. 'The future experiments and observations will reveal if my results are only (surprising) numerical coincidences or an embryo of a new scientific revolution.' Given the many theories around explaining various observati ons in recent times, there seems to be a breakthrough is on its way in our understanding of the cosmos." - Full Article Sou rce ITEM #155 08/14/11 - Boost your garden’s output using ultrasonic mist If you enjoy gardening, it’s never too early to start thinking about next year’s growing season. [Jared Bouck] over at InventGeek loves his tomatoes, but the slow grow rates of his dirt-bound plants were less than impressive. To get things moving faster, he created a low-cost aeroponics system that uses ultrasonic mist to produce some pretty impressive results. The construction process of this ultrasonic aeroponics rig looks dead simple, and [Jared] said that he had everything assembled in about half an h our. A cheap ultrasonic mister was mounted in the bottom of a plastic tub, and holes were cut in the tub’s lid to make room for his growing baskets. Tomato seedlings were wrapped in rock wool and placed in a clay growing medium, suspended over the water b ath. The mister was turned on, and after just a few days, the results were obvious. In the last step of his tutorial, he compares his aeroponically grown plant to one grown in soil – the difference is unbelievable. Considering how reasonably priced his se tup is, it seems like a no-brainer to start growing your entire vegetable garden this way. - Full Article Source ITEM #156 08/14/11 - 54.5 MPG Standard by 2025: Here Are Ten Ways to Improve Mileage The White House and the major automakers are on the verge of a deal that would raise the average fuel efficiency for cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, according to the Washington Post. It's a definite jump. Right now, the fleet avera ge mileage for new cars coming off the line is 28.3 MPG and will have to jump to 34.1 MPG by 2016. The White House had been shooting for an upper limit of 62 MPG by 2025 while the lower limit had been touted at around 42 MPG. Thus, the compromise figure o f 54.5 MPG is toward the middle with a nudge to the high side. So what will automakers do to get there? - Fu ll Article Source ITEM #157 08/14/11 - Edison's Anti-Gravity Underwear and Other Wonders While trolling through my RSS feeds last week, I came across a delightful blog post by John Ptak, who has a penchant for quirky historical oddities -- in this case, an 1879 issue of The London Punch crediting US inventor Thomas Edison with the invention o f antigravity undergarments. It wasn't real, of course, but at the time, Edison was just coming into his fame, and seemed like he could achieve any number of marvels previously thought impossible. What about real-life antigravity schemes? Many of the youn g boys who devoured those early science fiction novels grew up to be fascinated by futuristic technologies. Some of them spent decades laboring over prototype inventions that never quite seemed to work. Whether they were crackpots or visionaries depends o n who you ask, but here are five of the best known proponents of antigravity. - Full Article Source ITEM #158 08/14/11 - Could Seawater Solve the Freshwater Crisis? With 1.8 billion people predicted to live in areas of extreme water scarcity by 2025, desalination—the removal of salt from water—is increasingly being proposed as a solution. But before desalination can make a real difference solving in the looming water crisis, officials and experts need to commit to overcoming obstacles that make the process expensive and inefficient, a new paper argues. Modern desalination plants use a technology called reverse osmosis, pressing salty water through ultrathin, semiperm eable plastic membranes. Unable to pass through, large molecules or ions, such as salt, are filtered out, so fresh water flows out the other side. (See diagrams of three proposed alternatives to reverse osmosis desalination.) This method wastes much less energy than earlier desalination techniques, such as heating seawater and harvesting fresh water from the steam. But a typical reverse osmosis plant can still spend up to 40 percent of its operating costs on generating electricity to run the system—a big reason engineers are searching for ways to cut costs and make plants more efficient, starting at the membrane level. Another puzzle is what to do with the salty water, or brine, created as part of the desalination process. If a plant is close to the ocean , the brine can be safely released back into the sea if it's dissolved beforehand. But getting rid of this concentrated solution is more problematic for inland reverse osmosis (RO) plants. "If you're away from a coastal region, it's not a simple matter," Cohen said. "There are regulations that, in some regions, may prevent discharge of the RO concentrate back into a surface water body or into the sewer. And in certain areas, injecting that water underground may not be permitted and can be very costly." De spite RO's promise, Yale's Elimelech is concerned that countries might see RO desalination as a silver bullet for water woes. In many cases, the best options may be slightly less sexy but also less expensive: smarter land planning and plain-old water cons ervation, for example. - Full Article Source ITEM #159 08/14/11 - Cree demo LED bulb turns up dial on efficiency The bulb, which Cree is calling the 21st Century Lamp, gives off more than 1,300 lumens, or more than a 75-watt incandescent light, and consumes 8.7 watts. It's shaped to give off even light, making it suitable for all sorts of applications, rather than j ust spot lights or ceiling lights placed in recessed cans. The color rendering index, a measure of light quality, is over 90, which is relatively high for LEDs, and the color temperature can range from a cooler white light to more traditional yellow color . This bulb from Cree's labs follows another demonstration bulb it announced earlier this year, but the efficiency, at more than 150 lumens per watt, is significantly higher. "We calculate that if fully deployed, LED lighting at 150 lumens per watt could bring a 16.5 percent reduction in the nation's electric energy consumption, returning it to 1987 levels," said Cree co-founder Neal Hunter in a statement. For comparison, Lighting Sciences Group has a 60-watt equivalent that consumes 13 watts for a rating of 65 lumens per watt. A 75-watt incandescent bulb performs at about 14.6 lumens per watt, according to Cree. EnergyStar-rated compact fluorescent light (CFL) have lumens per watt ranging from the mid-50s to mid-60s. Cree engineers adopted a novel shape to get the even light and efficiency it was shooting for. Instead of a round bulb, the lamp is shaped like a cylinder. And like all LEDs, it has a heat sink below the light sources to wick away heat and improve the product life. - Full Article Source ITEM #160 08/14/11 - Deep Brain stimulation to 'cure' sexual Orientation Dr. Robert G. Heath's 1972 paper Pleasure and brain activity in man: Deep and surface electroencephalograms during orgasm details an insane experiment in which a suicidal, drug-addicted gay man was wired up with deep-brain stimulators; the good doctor the n paid a prostitute to screw said suicidal, drug-addicted gay man. The experiment's purpose? To cure his gay orientation. "...the patient was equipped with a three-button self-stimulating transistorized device... The three buttons... were attached to elec trodes in the various deep [brain] sites, and the patient was free to stimulate any of these three sites as he chose... He was permitted to wear the device for 3 hours at a time: on one occasion he stimulated his septal region 1,200 times, on another occa sion 1,500 times, and on a third occasion 900 times. He protested each time the unit was taken from him, pleading to self-stimulate just a few more times... the patient reported feelings of pleasure, alertness, and warmth (goodwill); he had feelings of se xual arousal and described a compulsion to masturbate... One aspect of the total treatment program for this patient was to explore the possibility of altering his sexual orientation through electrical stimulation of pleasure sites of the brain. As indicat ed in the history, his interests, contacts, and fantasies were exclusively homosexual; heterosexual activities were repugnant to him. A twenty-one-year-old female prostitute agreed, after being told the circumstances, to spend time with the patient in a s pecially prepared laboratory." - Full Article Source ITEM #161 08/14/11 - Corrugate Plating deflects Armor-Piercing Bullets - July, 1936 BY FURROWING the surface of metal plate with angular ridges, a Philadelphia inventor has materially increased the strength of armor designed for use on tanks, warships, and aircraft. In recent ballistic experiments conducted before ordnance experts, high- powered bullets fired from a distance of fifty yards pierced a test section of flat armor plate one half inch thick. When a slightly thinner section of corrugated armor was used, however, bullets fired from the same distance failed to penetrate its surfac e, but ricocheted off the sides. Armor penetration depends on a bullet’s angle of impact. Corrugated armor plate, the inventor explains, presents a surface inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees; bullets strike it a glancing rather than a direct blow. - Full Article Source ITEM #162 08/14/11 - Money and Politics Maplight.com follows the money in politics. Recent example: Oil and gas interest groups gave 7.7 times as much money ($6,097 each), to House members who voted “yes” on speeding up construction of a new oil and gas pipeline as they gave to House members wh o voted “no.” The measure passed the House on July 27. - Full Article Source ITEM #163 08/14/11 - First functional anal sphincters made in the laboratory Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have built the first functional anal sphincters in the laboratory. Suggesting a potential future treatment for both the fecal and urinary incontinence that often develops with ageing. Made from muscle and nerve cells, the sphincters developed a blood supply and maintained function when implanted in mice. 'In essence, we have built a replacement sphincter that we hope can one day benefit human patients. This is the first bioengineered sphincter made with bo th muscle and nerve cells, making it 'pre-wired' for placement in the body,' said senior author Khalil N. Bitar, Ph.D., a professor of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine. (Politicians' parents discovered this long ago. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #164 08/14/11 - Britain falls victim to its own cult of absurd tolerance Vyacheslav Nikonov, an expert for Great Britain, the President of Politika Foundation, shared his point of view about the events in London with Pravda.Ru. "As it happened in France, the positions of right-nationalist parties in the UK are going to strengt hen. Cameron will see it again that the politics of multiculturalism has failed. Violent sentiments among immigrants will continue to get stronger too. The current situation in the UK is much more complicated than it was in France. The British immigrants are represented a lot wider than the French ones because of colonial peculiarities. There are many immigrants in the country from both the north and the equatorial part of Africa. The immigrants from India and Pakistan deserve special attention. "As for t he reasons of why it happened, the grounds for that have been forming for decades, when immigrants from former colonies began to settle in European metropolitan cities. Great Britain fell victim to its own "democratic policies" in North Africa." The last time when Tottenham saw such massive riots was in 1985. However, the past riots did not have the immigration constituent. Great Britain, the country that welcomes revolutions in other states, has become a center of one of such revolutions in a blink of an eye. The situation in London's non-white neighborhoods remains extremely intense. Many immigrants from former colonies have no education and no jobs. They are ready to protest against manifestations of racism and police tyranny. Those people say that the economic development of the West became possible only after the West turned many other countries into its colonies and enslaved millions of people. Now the West is upset about the fact that several stores in London have been looted. - Full Article Source ITEM #165 08/14/11 - PC Designer Says PC "Going the Way of the Vacuum Tube" "One of the original engineers of IBM's first PC says PCs are 'going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.' With the 30th anniversary of the IBM 5150 (running MS-DOS) coming this week, IBM CTO Mark Dean a rgues that the post-PC world is very much upon us, perhaps not surprising given that IBM sold its PC business in 2005. Microsoft, of course, weighed in as well, saying the PC era is nowhere near over. But perhaps in the future we will consider a personal computer anything a person does computing on — whether that be laptop, tablet, smartphone, or something that hasn't even been invented yet." - Full Article Source ITEM #166 08/14/11 - Cancer Cured By HIV "Apparently cancer has been cured, by injecting people with HIV. From the article: 'As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but b eyond that the side effects have been minimal.' Nifty. Poorly edited run-on sentence, but nifty." - Full Article Source ITEM #167 08/14/11 - DARPA Loses Contact With Hypersonic Glider "DARPA says contact with its experimental hypersonic glider was lost after launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast. The agency says in Twitter postings that its unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 was launched Thu rsday atop a rocket, successfully separated from the booster and entered the mission's glide phase. The agency says telemetry was subsequently lost, but released no details." - Full Article Source ITEM #168 08/14/11 - Human Brain Is Sensitive To Light In Ears "Finnish researchers have shown that the human brain contains photoreceptors that react to intracranial illumination. Light is provided through the ear canal with bright-light headsets by Valkee. These devices, much like earphones or should we say 'earlum es,' are registered medical devices. Retinal illumination or bright-light therapy has been previously assumed to be the only way light indirectly affects brains. Light therapy helps with mood swings, seasonal affective disorder, jetlag and other circadian rhythm disruptions." - Full Article Source ITEM #169 08/14/11 - US Energy Panel Cautiously Endorses Fracking "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a U.S. Energy Department advisory panel has endorsed fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a promising technology that injects a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals underground to fracture rock and release shale gas previously thought unretrievable, paving the way for tens of thousands of new wells. If fracking can be done safely, it could be a major source of domestic energy over the next century. Shale gas makes up about 14 percent of the U.S. natural gas suppl y today, but is expected to reach 45 percent by 2035. But first, serious environmental concerns must be addressed. Earlier this year, a Duke University study of 68 private groundwater wells in Pennsylvania and New York state found evidence that shale-gas extraction has caused them to become contaminated with methane. One key recommendation by the panel is a call for transparency regarding the use of chemicals in the extraction process. Drillers say they would like to keep the exact formula of the chemical s they use secret because it represents a competitive advantage." - Full Article Source ITEM #170 08/14/11 - Researchers Make Graphene From Girl Scout Cookies "Last year we learned that the miracle material graphene could be made from common table sugar, and now researchers at Rice University have taken the discovery one step further by literally baking it from a box of girl scout cookies. A group of graduate s tudents led by chemist James Tour recently teamed up with Houston Girl Scout troop 25080 to perform the feat using a single box of Trefoil cookies — which could potentially yield $15 billion worth of graphene." - Full Article Source ITEM #171 08/14/11 - Why Companies Knowingly Ship Insecure Devices "A recent survey which included responses from 800 engineers and developers that work on embedded devices revealed that 24% of respondents knew of security problems in their company's products that had not been disclosed to the public before the devices w ere shipped. But just what that means in terms of attitudes towards security may be more complex than it seems. Additionally, just 41% said their company has 'allocated sufficient time and money to secure' its device products against hacks and attacks. De spite this, 64 percent felt that when engineers call attention to potential security problems, 'those problems are addressed before the device is released.' So, what exactly does this illustrate about the state of security in the development process? The answer, some say, is a jumbled collage of business pressures, bug prioritization and varying attention to security." - Full Art icle Source ITEM #172 08/14/11 - Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk Tissue engineer Hanna Wendt has released a study about using spider silk to create artificial skin. The study found that "spider silks display excellent mechanical features that even rival man-made, high-tech fibers," but didn't mention anything about pat ients gaining the ability to climb walls or sense impending danger. From the article: "Despite being impressed by how human cells responded to spider silk, Wendt thinks the use of synthetic fibers must be considered, especially since harvesting large amou nts of spider silk is not practical." - Full Article Source ITEM #173 08/14/11 - 'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body "Researchers have developed ultrathin electronics that can be placed on the skin as easily as a temporary tattoo (abstract). The scientists hope the new devices will pave the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity without bulky equipment, o r perhaps computers that operate via the subtlest voice commands or body movement. The devices can even be hidden under actual temporary tattoos to keep the electronics concealed, giving them potential applications for espionage." - Full Article Source ITEM #174 08/14/11 - Jeff Bezos Wants To Put an Airbag In Your iPhone "Don't want to pay Apple $199 to repair the cracked screen of the $199 iPhone you dropped? Neither, apparently, does Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. A patent application made public Thursday lists Bezos as an inventor of 'a system and method for protecting devices from impact damage,' which proposes using airbags, springs, and even a jet propulsion system to keep your iPhones, iPads, and other portable devices safe..." - Full Article Source ITEM #175 08/14/11 - BART Disables Cell Service To Disrupt Protests "Yesterday, in an effort to disrupt rumored protests at Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, BART officials disabled cell phone and internet access within most of the BART system by shutting down the antennas that enable reception in the underground stations. " - Full Article Source ITEM #176 08/14/11 - Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use "The Netherlands is testing a new car use tax system that will tax drivers based upon how much they drive rather than just taxing the vehicle itself. The trials utilize a little box outfitted with GPS, wireless internet, and a complex rating system that t racks a car's environmental impact, its distance driven, its route, and what time it is driven as a fairer way to assess the impact of the vehicle and hopefully dissuade people from driving. The proposal will be introduced slowly as a replacement for the current car and gas tax, however it is most certainly controversial and will be a real test of how far environmentally savvy Dutch citizens will be willing to go to reduce the impact of the car." - Full Article Source ITEM #177 08/14/11 - Canadian Judge Rules Domain Names Are Property "A recent decision in the Ontario Appeals court has ruled in favour of Tucows, saying that domain names are considered property, rather than being a license. This has major ramifications for a people both inside and outside Canada, doubly so since Tucows is a major domain registrar. This ruling comes from a very high court, which means that any appeal must go to the Supreme Court of Canada. So there is a good chance this ruling will stand." - Full Article Source ITEM #178 08/14/11 - US Pumps $175M Into Advanced Auto Fuel Research "In the wake of new fuel efficiency standards, the Energy Department this week spotted 40 new research projects $175 million to develop everything from light-weight building materials to electronics and advanced fuel. Last month, the U.S. set new fuel eff iciency standards for cars and light trucks, saying they must hit 54.5 miles per gallon by Model Year 2025. The projects awarded contracts should address some of the issues involved in making cars and trucks more fuel efficient. At least that's the idea." - Full Article Source ITEM #179 08/11/11 - Keep your Mouth Shut? - Open Science Summit 2011 After the great success of OSS in 2010, it is back to help to gather and broadcast voices from all around to discuss the ways that science is changing these days, how to improve access to research results and how regular citizens can use these results to learn more about themselves, their environment and act if needed. The Internet and the engagement that it has made possible is changing the way we do science, is giving us new possibilities to become more than passive users, but also creating questions ab out the way that access to research is restricted, and what are the changes needed so the public can use and learn freely what they are already paying for. Join us at the OSS 2011, to find ways to make the research and discovery process even moire open an d transparent to the citizens, and also receptive to their input. - Full Article Source ITEM #180 08/11/11 - Invention Scams Inventions — People looking to patent and market new inventions or ideas should be wary when dealing with invention promoters, the Better Business Bureau said. Some companies offering to help inventors obtain patents and market their ideas ask for substan tial upfront fees but rarely are successful in turning ideas into cash, the BBB said. Before making such agreements, inventors should carefully research the promotion company and consult with patent attorneys, the organization said. Dispute resolution — The Better Business Bureau advises consumers to be careful when using a website that has charged fees for help resolving business disputes. In a news release, the organization said it has received complaints that a business operati ng as OnlineBusinessScams.com has charged consumers who want to resolve conflicts with businesses, only to then forward the complaints to the BBB. The BBB does not charge consumers for help in resolving business disputes and says there is no need to invol ve a third party. - Full Article Source ITEM #181 08/11/11 - Energy Storage for Solar Power BrightSource Energy has become the latest solar thermal power company to develop a system for generating power when the sun isn't shining. The company says the technology can lower the cost of solar power and make it more reliable, helping it compete with conventional sources of electricity. Solar thermal systems use mirrors to focus sunlight, generating temperatures high enough to produce steam to drive a turbine. One of the advantages of the solar thermal approach, versus conventional photovoltaics that convert sunlight directly into electricity, is that heat can be stored cheaply and used when needed to generate electricity. In all solar thermal plants, some heat is stored in the fluids circulating through the system. This evens out any short fluctuati ons in sunlight and lets the plant generate electricity for some time after the sun goes down. But adding storage systems would let the plant ride out longer periods of cloud cover and generate power well into, or even throughout, the night. Such long-ter m storage could be needed if solar is to provide a large share of the total power supply. BrightSource is using a variation on an approach to storage that's a decade old: heating up a molten salt—typically, a combination of sodium and potassium nitride—an d then storing it in a tank. To generate electricity, the molten salt is pumped through a heat exchanger to generate steam. BrightSource CEO John Woolard says one big factor in making this technology economically attractive is the use of power towers—in w hich mirrors focus sunlight on a central tower—that generate higher temperatures than other solar thermal designs. That higher temperature makes it possible to store more energy using a smaller amount of molten salt. "It's a much more efficient system and much more cost effective, overall," he says. - Full Article Source ITEM #182 08/11/11 - Man Claims Invention Company Misled Him w/video Ken Crenshaw, of Travelers Rest, believes you can't put a price on privacy in public restrooms. That's why he invented a small device that addresses the problem of broken locks on stall doors. "We call it the John Lock," Crenshaw said. "It's your own litt le locking device. You can lock the stall door behind you where nobody can come in on you." Crenshaw said he knew getting the device to market would best be left to the professionals. He said it's why he called InventHelp, a company that helps people seek patents on their inventions and submit those inventions to companies. But Crenshaw said the company's basic package costing hundreds of dollars was more than he could afford. Crenshaw is unemployed, and while he managed to come up with a $250 down paymen t, he said he told the sales rep he didn't have the rest. "He said, 'You probably won't even have to worry about the rest of the money and stuff.' He said, 'I don't foresee you even having to worry about it,'" Crenshaw said. Crenshaw said he reluctantly s igned a contract, knowing he wouldn't be able to pay any future payments that came due. He said several weeks passed, and there were no follow up calls from InventHelp. But Crenshaw said a collection agency hired by the company did call. "I started gettin g phone calls from UPC, Universal Payment, wanting their money," he said. But a spokeswoman at InventHelp's Columbia office disputed Crenshaw's version of what happened. Currier called InventHelp "the best shot for investors" and said the company has an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. "We're No. 1 in the nation," Currier said. "There's a reason we're number one." But Crenshaw, who admits to willingly signing the contract, said he believed InventHelp wouldn't ask him for more money, based on what the salesman told him. - Full Article Source ITEM #183 08/11/11 - The Amazing Motor That Draws Power From the Air (Apr, 1971) Today, we use electromagnetic motors almost exclusively. But electrostatics have a lot of overlooked advantages. They’re far lighter per horsepower than electromagnetics, can run at extremely high speeds, and are incredibly simple and foolproof in constru ction. “And, in principle,” maintains Dr. Oleg Jefimenko, “they can do any- thing electromagnetic motors can do, and some things they can do better.” Jewel-like plastic motors. Jefimenko puts on an impressive demonstration. He showed us motors that run on the voltage developed when you hold them in your hands and scuff across a carpet, and other heavier, more powerful ones that could do real work. Up on the roof of the University’s physics building in a blowing snowstorm, he connected an electrostatic mot or to a specially designed earth-field antenna. It twirled merrily from electric power drawn out of thin air. These remarkable machines are almost unknown today. Yet the world’s first electric motor was an electrostatic. It was invented in 1748 by Benjami n Franklin. Franklin’s motor took advantage of the fact that like charges repel, unlike ones attract. He rigged a wagonwheel-size, horizontally mounted device with 30 glass spokes. On the end of each spoke was a brass thimble. Two oppositely charged Leyde n jars—high-voltage capacitors —were so placed that the thimbles on the rotating spokes barely missed the knobs on the jars. As a thimble passed close to a jar, a spark leaped from knob to thimble. That deposited a like charge on the thimble, so they repe lled each other. Then, as the thimble approached the oppositely charged jar, it was attracted. As it passed this second jar, a spark jumped again, depositing a new charge, and the whole repulsion-attraction cycle began again. The Russian-born physicist wa s attending a class at the University of Gottingen one day shortly after World War II when the lecturer, a Prof. R. W. Pohl, displayed two yard-square metal plates mounted on the end of a pole. He stuck the device outside and flipped it 180 degrees. A gal vanometer hooked to the plates jumped sharply. “I could never forget that demonstration,” said Jefimenko. “And I wondered why, if there is electricity in the air, you couldn’t use it to light a bulb or something.” Electricity everywhere. The earth’s electrical field has been known for centuries. Li ghtning and St. Elmo’s fire are the most dramatic manifestations of atmospheric electricity. But the field doesn’t exist just in the vicinity of these events; it’s everywhere. The earth is an electrical conductor. So is the ionosphere, the layer of ionize d gas about 70 kilometers over our heads. The air between is a rather poor insulator. Some mechanism not yet explained constantly pumps large quantities of charged particles into the air. The charged particles cause the electrical field that Jefimenko saw demonstrated. Although it varies widely, strength of the field averages 120v per meter. You can measure this voltage with an earth-field antenna—a wire with a sharp point at the top to start a corona, or with a bit of radioactive material that ionizes th e air in its immediate vicinity. Near the earth, voltage is proportional to altitude; on an average day you might measure 1,200 volts with a 10-meter antenna. Over the past few years, aided by graduate-student Henry Fischbach-Nazario, Jefimenko designed advanced corona motors. With David K. Walker, he experimented with electret motors. An electret is an insulator with a permanent electrostatic charge. It pro duces a permanent electric field in the surrounding space, just as a magnet produces a permanent magnetic field. And like a magnet, it can be used to build a motor. Jefimenko chose the electrostatic motor for his project because the earth-field antennas d evelop extremely high-voltage low-current power; and—unlike the electromagnetic motor—that’s exactly what it needs. The climactic experiment. On the night of Sept. 29, 1970, Jefimenko and Walker strolled into an empty parking lot, and hiked a 24-foot pole painted day-glow orange into the sky. On the pole’s end was a bit of radioactive material in a capsule connected to a wire. The experimenters hooked an electret motor to the antenna, and, as Jefimenko describes it, “the energy of the earth’s electrical f ield was converted into continuous mechanical motion.” Two months later, they successfully operated a corona motor from electricity in the air. - Full Article Source ITEM #184 08/11/11 - Micro homes and micro apartments for struggling cities There is a growing movement in the world today towards building and living in smaller homes which are often referred to as micro homes, or micro apartments. The idea being that smaller homes are less expensive to build, to heat, and to cool. Smaller homes also require less space which is an ideal situation for any crowded city with a housing problem. Micro homes are very green in design and take a lot less material and labor which keeps the prices down and enables people who may never have had the opportu nity to purchase their own home or to rent a decent home to do so. Now if you consider that most cities need tax revenue, and that we have such a high rate of unemployment, I think that my suggestion has merit and everyone concerned should give it careful thought. Basically, I am suggesting that the cities and towns that are experiencing revenue and housing problems amend their zoning laws and building codes to allow the judicious building of these micro homes and micro apartments. For example, if there is a hom e located on a decent size lot, and the home owner wishes to invest in a rental unit to be placed in the rear of the building, and if there is room for a proper parking space etc. then he, or she should be allowed to file for a permit. Let’s take a large three family dwelling that needs rehabbing for example. The investor who buys it should be able to either gut it, or tear it down, and turn the property into perhaps as many as twelve micro apartments. This part of my plan is not rocket science and should be doable with some minor zoning changes. Now, the second part of my plan is that through building an experimental model, our company has realized that these smaller homes (128 sq ft to 800 sq ft) are highly mass producible and simple to build either in kit form or in certain sizes fully assemble d and delivered to the site. It is also noteworthy that many people are powering these homes either fully, or partially off the power grid with solar and small wind power. We find this inexpensive if you stick mostly to lighting systems and hot water. One hundred percent off the power grid is still pricey, but partial systems save money and have the added incentive of tax credits in some areas. Here is where we create the jobs. I suggest that in a city, like Providence RI, where there appear to be many abandoned factories and other buildings, that they take one of those buildings in a partnership with private industry and set up an assembly p lant to produce these homes and prefabbed apartment walls sections etc. A precondition of such an agreement could be that the workers would be hired and trained only if they were residents of the city of Providence only if it is legal. A program like this would add additional tax revenue to the city, and it would also provide some decent jobs. Also, all building materials would be purchased locally as part of the agreement. The cost of the homes should be limited to approximately one hundred dollars a squ are foot or adjusted as necessary to local conditions. Another idea is to have local businesses that benefit from the program contribute to the program either financially or by providing free training. - Full Article Source ITEM #185 08/11/11 - Roseanne: God Is Telling Me To Run For President Roseanne: The president is just a figurehead. He has to answer to bankers. But when I'm sitting in the White House, it's gonna change. I'm gonna make war illegal, then make all lobbying illegal and legalize hemp and marijuana. Whatever I can't figure out, I'll get from big experts at MIT—people that have answers. I want 100 percent geniuses, no lobbyists. And 53 percent women, to reflect the character of the country. Also a lot of poor people. I'm thinking of voting an entirely new government in rather th an be part of our crumbling, rotting, unfixable one. I like the idea of "co-president," but the way I'm looking at it is maybe run for prime minister and return to a parliamentary constitution type monarchy. Me: But we had a revolution to get away from th at. Roseanne: And that was a good revolution and it worked for a long time, but once they put the Federal Reserve in, it wasn't the same country. We should return to our roots and start over every generation, like Tom Jefferson advised. We can't just be t he servant class of bankers. I'd like to be queen, and not just of the United States. I'd like to throw all the bums out and replace them with wonderful grandmothers who care about the planet. - Full Article Source ITEM #186 08/11/11 - Feel the hum of electricity between your legs Here’s a little eye candy for motorcycle enthusiasts everywhere. This is the newest iteration of [Julian's] electric motorcycle. He obviously knows what he’s doing because everything fits into the frame in a way that is still very pleasing to the eye. But this is actually slimmed down from the original design. If you take a look a back at some of his older posts you’ll see that the four relatively small lithium batteries are a new addition. The frame was designed to hold four lead-acid batteries. Those th ings really take up a lot of space and add considerable weight to the vehicle. His recent upgrade was also accompanied by a re-gearing that allows him to reach higher speeds (although he doesn’t say what the top speed actually is). You can’t really see it above, but [Julian] included a wooden insert where the tank on a gasoline motorcycle would have been. It houses control switches as well as a 48V voltmeter. It’s a fantastic finishing touch like the cherry on a sundae. / This machine is now in its second major revision: I got a deal on some lithium cells from Barefoot Motors (Jamie from Mythbusters’ ATV company) Lucky day, they also came with a balance charger. Lithium Batteries, Tail-section and Lighting, better cooling and so on.It has a new gear ratio as well. Top speed and acceleration have actually both increased. The previous gearing was simply too tall. The new cells are so strong that when fully charged they actually hit V+ cutoff on the controller. I’m skipping a cell for the time being and cons idering using it to run accessory cooling. You can still see the tank tabs from the previous iteration’s plexiglass side covers. - Full Article Source ITEM #187 08/11/11 - Little Exercise, Big Effects It has been shown that physical exercise increases BDNF mRNA in the hippocampus, the present study examined voluntary exercise in 24-month-old F344×BN rats as a neuroprotective therapeutic in our bacterial infection model. Although aged rats ran only an a verage of 0.7 km per week, this small amount of exercise was sufficient to completely reverse infection-induced impairments in hippocampus-dependent long-term memory compared with sedentary animals. Strikingly, exercise prevented the infection-induced exa ggerated neuroinflammatory response and the blunted BDNF mRNA induction seen in the hippocampus of sedentary rats. Moreover, voluntary exercise abrogated age-related microglial sensitization, suggesting a possible mechanism for exercise-induced neuroprote ction in aging. - Full Article Source ITEM #188 08/11/11 - 6 Ancient Things That Were Probably Built By Aliens Okay, I'm going to straight up tell you I might be lying with the title of this daily list. Because these structures (all real) that I'm going to list may have been built by aliens but they may also have been built by ancient peoples with technologies tha t were influenced by aliens, mostly because we can't figure out how they did it. At all. This is admittedly a subtle distinction, but either way, these are some mind-bogglingly amazing structures on Earth that we have no f**king clue how they were made by ancient men. Which means the more logical explanation for them is "aliens did it." Or, at least, "aliens helped considerably." Either one. I just learned about Puma Punku in Bolivia recently, and after all the things I've read and all the photos I've see n, I'm in the camp of people that say, "We don't know why or how." It's a megalithic structure atop a 13,000 ft plateau with massive blocks fitting together like Legos -- again, without mortar. The age is estimated conservatively at about 2000 years old, but many people believe they are much older, with some guesses as early as 14,000 years old. The heaviest of these stones is 450 tons -- roughly the same weight as seven M-1 Abrams tanks. What makes this even more amazing is that many of these blocks were cut from diorite, an insanely hard rock that was used in ancient times to cut other rocks. The grooves in the diorite are machine-made, some as small as a centimeter deep with only 1 mm variation. And all these blocks are cut like this. Even today's engi neers are daunted by this task, and then carting them up a 13,000 ft mountain? - Full Article Source ITEM #189 08/11/11 - Venture Capitalists Back Away from Clean Energy As governments around the world are scaling back support for renewable energy, venture capitalists are shifting their clean technology investment strategy. They're focusing less on high-risk technologies and more on technologies, such as those for improvi ng energy efficiency, that could have a faster payoff but a smaller impact. The shift is raising concerns about how innovative energy technologies will be commercialized. Venture capitalists have traditionally focused on companies with low capital requir ements that can quickly get bought up or go public. Many Internet startups fall into this category. But in recent years, many venture capitalists have been enticed to risk longer-term, high-capital energy investments in clean energy, thanks to by generous government subsidies in renewable energy markets. In particular, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on solar-cell startups that need to build expensive equipment and factories to prove their technologies, and can take many years to generate a ret urn on investment. Now many venture-capital firms are going back to their roots. Dozens recently stopped making initial investments in clean technology companies, according to Dow Jones Venture Source. - Full Article Source ITEM #190 08/11/11 - Antioxidants And Reality Few medical remedies have a more sterling reputation than that assortment of foods, pills, and general life maneuvers known collectively as "antioxidants." At last, here's something tha tpromises better heart health, improved immunity, a pellucid complexi on as well as relief against cancer, arthritis, and the blahs—and it's all-natural! What's not to like? Well, there is a wee small problem in our ongoing anti-oxidize-athon: As it turns out, we have no evidence that antioxidants are beneficial in humans. (Though if you're a Sprague-Dawley rat, there's hope.) In fact, as Emily Anthes wrote last year in Slate, the best available data demonstrate that antioxidants are bad for you—so long as you count an increased risk of death as "bad." A doctor sez: So when a patient comes in to ask (or tell) me about the curative powers of antioxidants, I am stuck. I can give him a boring recitation of the latest findings, or mention that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has declared that "the re is limited scientific evidence to support the use of antioxidant supplements to prevent disease." And he'll tell me that the pills worked wonders for his sister-in-law out in Queens. We both sigh and look away. If he goes ahead and starts guzzling pome granate juice, he doesn't tell me. - Full Article Source ITEM #191 08/11/11 - Bad economy may be mother of invention "The whole engine that drives any economy is inventing, innovation," says Stephen Gnass, a Los Angeles-based invention consultant and advocate for more than 30 years. "What made America great is innovation." "What we're in right now is pretty bad, and it doesn't look like it's getting better," says Gnass, founder of InventionConnection.com and executive director of The National Congress of Inventor Organizations, a non-profit for inventors and inventor groups. "We're going to have to invent ourselves out of the doldrums we've gotten ourselves into." Americans are driven to invent during tough times, he and other experts agree, because many have lost comfortable jobs that once made it easy to let an idea sit on a shelf. But now, Gnass says, the latest widg et or improvement on an existing product can generate a steady stream of perhaps $10,000 to $20,000 per year in income. "A poor economy pushes people to be much bigger risk takers," Mank says. "They say to themselves, 'It can't get worse in Corporate Amer ica; I've had this idea in my head for a long time; I need to go do it.'" Being a successful inventor can be akin to being a landlord, Gnass says. "If you own intellectual property, it's like you collect rent out of the air," he says. "If somebody has the passion and the stick-to-itiveness, you can make a good living." - Full Article Source ITEM #192 08/11/11 - Peripheral Disclosure The requirement that inventors disclose their inventions in return for a patent is one of the primary justifications for the patent system. Yet that justification has been subject to substantial criticism, and with good reason. Conventional disclosure sch olarship focuses on inventor’s disclosure within the patent itself, a document that often fails to provide meaningful information to others. As a result, conventional disclosure theory has largely been relegated to the category of a straw man that scholar s address perfunctorily when criticizing the patent system. This Essay rejects the idea that patents serve little to no disclosure function, not by demonstrating that patents themselves convey useful information, but by pointing to other information excha nges that would not occur but for the existence of a patent system, a concept I call "peripheral disclosure." This information plays a critical role in encouraging prospective technological invention. In essence, I argue that the greatest benefit of paten ts is not in the information they contain, but rather in the numerous peripheral disclosures they permit, from scientific papers about new inventions to marketing materials containing technical content to the informational benefits of self-disclosing inve ntions. Without patents, none of these disclosures - all of which may provide crucial information to future inventors - would be possible. - Full Article Source ITEM #193 08/11/11 - Gravity Glue I was looking in the Boulder Daily Camera, and I discovered that the rock sculptures were not cemented together. They had just been placed there earlier in the day by a man named Mike Grab. He has a website with photos of his sculptures, called Gravity Gl ue. - Full Article Source ITEM #194 08/11/11 - Degenerates “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently appr oaching.” — From a translation of an inscription on an Assyrian clay tablet, circa 2800 B.C.E. I'm just sayin'. - Ful l Article Source ITEM #195 08/11/11 - Power Companies Brace For Solar Storms "Three large explosions from the sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days that could affect comm unications and GPS satellites, leave thousands without power for weeks to months, and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin. 'The concern is if the electric grid lost a number of transformers during a single storm, r eplacing them would be difficult and time-consuming,' says Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for power delivery and utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The largest solar storm in recorded history was in 1859, when communicat ions infrastructure was limited to telegraphs. Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, papers caught fire, and the Northern Lights appeared as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. The first of the three solar explosions from the sun already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact and the second is passing the Earth now and 'seems to be stronger.' "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days," says space weather scientist Joseph Kunches. '[The third storm] could exacerbate the disturb ance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #196 08/11/11 - Start-Up Claims Immortality For Data With 'Stone-Like' Disc "Start-up Millenniata and LG plan to soon release a new optical disc and read/write player that will store movies, photos or any other data forever. The data can be accessed using any current DVD or Blu-ray player. The M-Disc can be dipped in liquid nitro gen and then boiling water without harming it. It also has a Defense Department study (PDF) backing up the resiliency of its product compared with other leading optical disc competitors. The company would not disclose what material is used to produce the optical discs, referring to it only as a 'natural' substance that is 'stone-like.' Like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the M-Disc platters are made up of multiple layers of material. But there is no reflective, or die, layer. Instead, during the recording proces s a laser 'etches' pits onto the substrate material." / Like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the M-Disc platters are made up of multiple layers of material. But unlike the former, there is no reflective or die layer. Instead, during the recording process a laser "etches" pits onto the substrate material. "Once the mark is made, it's permanent," Shumway said. "It can be read on any machine that can read a DVD. And it's backward compatible, so it doesn't require a special machine to read it - just a special machine to write it." - Full Article Source ITEM #197 08/11/11 - Technology Blamed For Helping UK Rioters "The WSJ reports that following three nights of rioting and looting in London, Blackberry's messaging network and social networking sites are being blamed by police, politicians and media organizations for helping rioters in London spread word about the n ext hot spot . It's an 'encrypted, very secure, safe, fast, cheap, free, easy way for disaffected urban youth to spread messages for the next targets,' says Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe and digital advisor to the Mayor of London. But Ian Maud e, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said it's unfair to lay the blame on technology. 'Certainly, it's a lot easier for people to communicate with each other in real time via some of these services but that's a fact of life. They're not good or evil in thems elves, its the purposes for which people use them.' The Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, say they are monitoring social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM), the maker of Blackberry smartphones, says it has 'engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #198 08/11/11 - Patent Troll Lawyer Sanctioned Over Extortion Tactics "For all the stories of patent trolls and copyright trolls, there haven't been too many stories of either being sanctioned for abusive or extortion-like practices... until now. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (one level below the Supreme Cour t) has approved over $600,000 in sanctions against a lawyer for a patent troll, saying that filing over a hundred lawsuits, each of which was followed up almost immediately with offers to settle at fees much cheaper than it would cost to fight, has the 'i ndicia of extortion.' Now if only judges started doing that more often." - Full Article Source ITEM #199 08/11/11 - Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook "Anonymous has vowed to destroy Facebook on November 5th (which should ring a bell). Citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account, Anonymous hopes to 'kill Facebook,' the 'medium of communication [we] all so dearly ad ore.' They continued, 'It is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It is a battle for choice and informed consent. ... Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely false. It gives users the illusion of and hid es the details away from them "for their own good" while they then make millions off of you. When a service is "free," it really means they're making money off of you and your information.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #200 08/11/11 - New USB Specification Promises 100W of Power "The group behind the USB 3.0 specification has announced a tweak which could lead to impressive new devices, including large-format displays, printers, and even laptops that are powered entirely from a USB port." - Full Article Source ITEM #201 08/11/11 - Taxonomy of technological risks: when things fail badly This report presents a taxonomy of operational cyber security risks that attempts to identify and organize the sources of operational cyber security risk into four classes: (1) actions of people, (2) systems and technology failures, (3) failed internal pr ocesses, and (4) external events. Each class is broken down into subclasses, which are described by their elements. This report discusses the harmonization of the taxonomy with other risk and security activities, particularly those de- scribed by the Fede ral Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publications, and the CERT Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation (OCTAVE) method. - Full Article Source ITEM #202 08/11/11 - Why The US Will Lose a Cyber War "There's not another nation in the world that can wage kinetic warfare as effectively as the United States, and that's probably at the heart of the reason why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace, leading cyber security analyst Jeffrey C arr writes." - Full Article Source ITEM #203 08/11/11 - Court Rules Sending Too Many Emails Is "Hacking" "An appeals court has ruled that having people send a company a lot of emails (in this case, a union protesting a company's business practices) qualifies as hacking under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. We're not even talking about a true DDoS action here , but just a bunch of protest emails. Part of the problem is that the company apparently set up their email to only hold a small number of emails in their inbox, and the court seems to think the union should take the blame for stuffing those inboxes." - < a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/10/182224/Court-Rules-Sending-Too-Many-Emails-Is-Hacking" target="_blank" >Full Article Source ITEM #204 08/11/11 - New Type of e-Paper Can Be Used Up To 260 Times "Taiwanese scientists developed a new type of film that can be printed on a thermal printer and erased up to 260 times. The boffins at the Industrial Technology Research Institute claim it as an ideal replacement for paper signs and posters. It does not r equire patterned electrodes. It is based on a plastic film covered with cholestric liquid crystal, a type of liquid crystal structured similarly to cholesterol molecules and can be erased by simply plugging it to a power source and an A4 sheet costs only US $2. It is expected to be available to consumers within the next two years." - Full Article Source ITEM #205 08/11/11 - Bruce Schneier’s Telepathic Takeover of the TSA Late last month, at the Aspen Security Forum, TSA chief John Pistole opened his mouth — and Schneier’s words came tumbling out. Pistole said it was high time to “recognize that the vast majority of people traveling every day are not terrorists.” To “try t o apply some more common sense to the process,” even. Forget patting down kids and telling people with top secret security clearances to take off their shoes. “I think we can do a different way of screening children that recognizes that, in the very high likelihood, they do not have a bomb on them,” he said. Besides, he added, “the best layer of security we have … is intelligence.” Clearly, Schneier had figured out some way of getting into TSA administrator’s head. The man was some kind of Charles Xavier type. Or maybe — just maybe — Pistole, after a year on the job, was finally feeling comfortable enough at the administration to make the changes he’s been itching to implement from the start. - Full Article Source ITEM #206 08/11/11 - Apple Now Offering Free Recycling For PCs "Do you have a few old, dusty beige-box computers kicking around that you'd like to turn into money? Or perhaps you'd just like to get rid of them, but you lack the means to dispose of them properly? Well, if you're in the US you're in luck: Apple will no w provide postage-paid packaging to allow you to recycle your old laptop or desktop PC and its monitor for free, and if it's worth anything, you'll even get an Apple Gift Card in return. In addition, your old iPhone or iPad can now be returned for an Appl e Gift Card, too." - Full Article Source ITEM #207 08/11/11 - New Drug Could Cure Nearly Any Viral Infection "A team of researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory have designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection. The researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever." - Full Article Source ITEM #208 08/11/11 - Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil "The tech industry's answer to this week's stock market roller coaster was delivered on Tuesday by the mighty Apple Inc. Apple saw its stock price rise enough — gaining more than 5% — to briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the U. S., according to an AP analysis of its market cap. (Exxon Mobile wound up the day slightly ahead of Apple.) Most of the other major tech companies — including Intel, IBM, Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard — all finished in positive territory yesterday, as markets made up ground lost in the big sell-off on Monday that also hit oil prices and other commodities.Tuesday's rally may be all that's needed to shake away, at least temporarily, some of the economic concerns the IT industry still faces. By closing in on Exxon, Apple effectively affirmed that there are few limits to tech growth. CW blogger Jonny Evans posits that ideas are why Apple beats Exxon on market cap, noting, 'While Exxon drills, hammers and crushes its way to find its billions, Apple's min d-miners explore myriad complexities to develop and understand new technologies.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #209 08/11/11 - Military Working On Laser Powered Drones "Modern militaries depend on fuel. Nearly 80 percent of the supplies delivered to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan consist of fuel, and it's no surprise that those military convoys are frequently the targets of insurgents. In the last decade, 1000 soldi ers have died delivering gasoline to military operations. A new approach using lasers could provide power to drones in flight or to machines on the ground and remove the need for gas deliveries to army bases." / The operator uses the machine to fire the l aser beam at a photovoltaic collector located on an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV), small plane or helicopter. The current range of the system is about a kilometer. By the time the beam reaches the collector on board the UAV, it's still about 10 times as intense as sunlight, although human eyes can't see it since its wavelength is deep red to near-infrared. The power levels are in the hundreds of watts to kilowatt range -- definitely hot, but not deadly at the range where it hits the plane. When the la ser hits the photovoltaic device, the photons in the light beam are converted to electricity in the same way that solar cells convert sunlight into electricity. But because the laser beam is comprised of a single wavelength of light, the conversion to ele ctricity is much more efficient than converting multiple wavelengths of sunlight to energy. The photons become electricity and the energy needed to fly the AUV. - Full Article Source ITEM #210 08/11/11 - Gollum, bearer of the ring Every woman's dream wedding! - Full Article Source ITEM #211 08/11/11 - Terrorist Target Mexican Nanotechnology Professors "A Mexican terrorist organization sent an explosive device to an ITESM professor due to his research in nanotechnology. ITS or Individuals with Wild Tendencies in english, is a group that claims to be against the 'nanotechnology revolution' in fear of a n anomachine take over that will mean the end of civilization. The group has published on their website that they plan to target individuals in this research field to ensure the survival of mankind. Mexican authorities are investigating the case." - Full Article Source ITEM #212 08/08/11 - Shielding magnetic fields with Metamaterials (will lead to free energy) In what seems like one new cloaking device being discovered after another, researchers in Spain have modeled a device that they say can prevent magnetism from leaking out of a containment container and also prevent it from being detected by an outside mag netic device. Their research builds on the work of John Pendry who in 2008, first proposed a method of cloaking a magnetized object by using materials with permeability in one direction less than one, and another that was perpendicular to it. In the new m odel, the first layer would be made of a superconducting layer of magnetic material with a permittivity (amount of resistance in an electric field) of zero. The middle layer would be an isotropic ferromagnetic material with constant permeability (degree o f magnetism that a material obtains) and the outer layer would be a material with an anisotropic (property of being directionally dependent) constant in all directions. The result would be a layered coating that would conceal the magnetism of an object in side the cloak from the outside world, while simultaneously preventing any of the magnetism from leaking out. The research team hasn’t yet attempted to build their antimagnet yet, but say in deploying their computer model the device was able to hide almos t all of the magnetism going on inside and didn’t leak. They believe if such a device can be built in the real world it would be useful for such applications as creating shields for people with pace-makers or cochlear implants, allowing them to be tested with MRI’s and other magnetic based equipment. The team also notes in their paper that while their model was small and cylindrical, they believe if real-world devices were built, they could be made in virtually any geometric shape. United States Patent Application 20060083931 - Wadle; Gordon ; et al. April 20, 2006 - Deflecting magnetic field shield Abstract The present invention concerns a shielding material for a magnetic shield containing coal slag; silver powder; a mixture of calcium powder, magnesium powder, and zinc powder; and silica powder. The shielding material is in powder form. In another embod iment, the present invention contemplates adding nano-silver to the shielding material. The present invention is based on the concept that the magnetic field is actually "deflected" away from the area shielded. This is possible in view of the shielding ma terials used to produce the magnetic shield. At the present time, the inventors do not understand the exact reactions that occur when the chemicals are mixed to form the shielding material of the present invention. The elements and the order of mixing was only achieved by preconceived notion and year's of trial and error. The magnetic shield of the present invention is based on the concept that the magnetic field is actually "deflected" away from the area shielded. This is possible in view of the shielding materials used to produce the magnetic s hield. The test went as follows: Each individual sheet of shielding material was set upright. The 28 lb rare earth magnet was held against one side of the shielding material, and the iron fillings against the other side. The magnet and the iron fillings were held against each side of the shielding material listed above A-E in the same manner. The magnet attraction from the 28 lb magnet to the iron fillings on shielding sheets A-D was strong enough to hold the iron fillings and the magnet in place. Test result s with sheet E. (present invention). The shield element E deflected the magnetic pull of the 28 lb rare earth magnet preventing the attraction to the iron fillings; thus, the magnet and the iron fillings fall down due to the earth's gravitation pull. The shielding material is in powder form and can be encapsulated into any form and shape desired. For those of us who study free energy, perpetual motion and such claims, this should really jump out as the solution to how to easily extract practical work from magnets. Many experimenters have tried various methods for blocking the magnetic field on one side to create the mythical, but much required, overbalancing effect. Earlier experimenters have used soft iron, silver and other materials. Such a means of completely blocking magnetic fields would provide that and finally give us self-running mag netically driven electrical generators. Despite the idiotic oft-repeated claim that 'magnets cannot do work', spoken by the shallow and ill-informed, stick a magnet on the door of a fridge and it will stay FOR YEARS, thus resisting the push of gravity and thus 'doing work'. It is the same kind of unthinking 'pronouncements' by those who claim alternative energy researchers are trying to 'create something from nothing'. Read, Think & Learn - I don't know of one single experimenter or researcher I've ever met or read about who claimed that. Therefore, we NEVER said that, our misguided, unthinking detractors did. - JWD - Full Article Source ITEM #213 08/08/11 - Cold Fusion inventor terminates deal with Defkalion Green Technologies All business relationships with Praxen , the Cyprus based company that owns the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies S.A., have been cancelled and as of today neither Praxen nor Defkalion, nor any other Greek company whatsoever holds any rights for the production of the E-Cat or for any other exploitation of Andrea Rossi’s technology. Furthermore Andrea Rossi and EFA announce that no information, nor industrial secret, nor any technology whatsoever has been neither transferred, nor disclosed, neithe r to Praxen, nor to Defkalion, nor to any other Greek company whatsoever and currently Andrea Rossi and EFA are not planning to deal with any other project in Greece. Not one single test, of the many demonstrations of the E-Cat technology held around the world, has ever been done in Greeceand no E-Cat has ever been brought, produced, or assembled in the territory of the Ellenic Republic: so not only the technology is still fully owned by Andrea Rossi’s company, Leonardo Corporation, but it still remains a well preserved industrial secret. Any declaration or public announcement of third parties claiming possession of rights on the E-Cat technology and/or indide knowledge of said technology, as well as any statement of third parties in conflict with the abo ve facts shall be considered a fake and treated as misleading information. Andrea Rossi is the inventor of the “Method and Apparatus for carrying out Nickel and Hydrogen Exothermal reactions” (known to the general public as E-Cat) for which international patent demand no. WO2009/125444 is pending and Italian Patent office has already been issued on April 6th, 2011 the final patent no. 0001387256. - Full Artic le Source ITEM #214 08/08/11 - Anti-Heroin Vaccine to Appear Soon Researchers from Ural State Medical Academy developed a substance, suitable for fighting addiction to opioid drugs, including heroin. Scientists designed a synthetic anti-opioid immunogenic substance, which worked according the same principle as anti-meas les vaccine. The substance promotes synthesis of antibodies in an organism, and when the drug enters the organism, antibodies bind with it and take it out, leaving an addict without a rush. The substance has successfully passed first stage of preclinical trials and tests on laboratory animals. Next stage is testing the substance on large animals, and then no human volunteers. Two more years are required before the substance enters the market. - Full Article Source ITEM #215 08/08/11 - Acoustic trauma: How wind farms make you sick Industrial wind installations are creating a serious health issue, and comprehensive research is urgently needed, says a former Professor of Public Health. "There has been no policy analysis that justifies imposing these effects on local residents. The at tempts to deny the evidence cannot be seen as honest scientific disagreement, and represent either gross incompetence or intentional bias," writes Carl Phillips, formerly Professor of Public Health at University of Alberta, now an independent researcher. "There is ample evidence that turbines cause a constellation of health problems, and attempts to deny this involve claims that are contrary to proper methods of scientific inference," Phillips writes in a paper published in the Bulletin of Science, Techno logy, and Society. It's one of several interesting papers in the journal, which is devoted to wind health issues. Industrial wind installations produce audible and non-audible noise, and optical flicker. Empirical studies are rare. Renewable UK, the wind and wave industry lobby group, cites research by the Noise Working Group for the UK business department on its web page devoted to noise issues. The 1996 study, known as ETSU-R-97 (10-page PDF/1.8MB), recommended "Noise from the wind farm should be limite d to 5dB(A) above background for both day-time and night-time", and in the Renewable UK portrait, wind farms sound idyllic; like nature, only more so. Sleep expert Dr Christopher Hanning has written: "Its major flaws include the use of averaged noise leve ls over too long a time period and using a best fit curve, thus ignoring the louder transient noise of AM which causes awakenings and arousals. It ignores also the property of low frequency noise to be audible over greater distances than higher frequency noise. By concentrating on sound pressure alone, it ignores the increased annoyance of particular noises, especially that associated with AM. It is also the only guidance anywhere in the world which permits a higher sound level at night than during the da y, completely contrary to common sense, noise pollution legislation and WHO guidelines." - Full Article Source ITEM #216 08/08/11 - European network of Stone Age tunnels going from Scotland to Turkey Stone Age man created a massive network of underground tunnels criss-crossing Europe from Scotland to Turkey, a new book on the ancient superhighways has claimed. German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch said evidence of the tunnels has been found under hun dreds of Neolithic settlements all over the continent. In his book - Secrets Of The Underground Door To An Ancient World - he claims the fact that so many have survived after 12,000 years shows that the original tunnel network must have been enormous. 'Ac ross Europe there were thousands of them - from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean. 'Most are not much larger than big wormholes - just 70cm wide - just wide enough for a person to wriggle along but nothing else. 'They are interspersed with n ooks, at some places it's larger and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms. 'They do not all link up but taken together it is a massive underground network.' Some experts believe the network was a way of protecting man from predators while other s believe that some of the linked tunnels were used like motorways are today, for people to travel safely regardless of wars or violence or even weather above ground. The book notes that chapels were often built by the entrances perhaps because the Church were afraid of the heathen legacy the tunnels might have represented, and wanted to negate their influence. In some cases writings have been discovered referring to the tunnels seen as a gateway to the underworld. (And this ladies and gents is how Jesus travelled all over the world for his 17 missing years to swap 'tricks' with other magicians. Only when he returned could he do 'miracles', before that, he only talked. See Saint Issa in Tibet. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #217 08/08/11 - Who knew Thinkpad batteries require a jump start? Lithium battery packs reaching the end of their life usually have a lot of kick left in them. That’s because they’re made up of multiple cells and it only takes the failure of one to bork the entire battery. One of the most interesting examples we’ve hear d of this is in the Toyota Prius, but that’s a story for another time. In this case, [Mika] wanted to resurrect the battery from his IBM Thinkpad T40. He identified the offending cell and replaced it, but couldn’t get any juice out of the battery after th e repair. He was measuring 0V on the output, but could measure the cells instead of the control circuitry and was getting over 11V. Clearly, the control circuit wasn’t allowing an output. We completely understand the concept here (think about that really bad press about exploding laptop batteries). It seems there’s a lockout mechanism when the control circuit loses power. [Mika] managed to get past this by shorting voltage into the control circuit, a method he likes in the video after the break to jump st arting a car. We’ve seen similar cell replacement for power tools, like a Dremel or a Makita drill. - Full Article Source ITEM #218 08/08/11 - Security expert can unlock 1,000s of cars by sending a text message Don Bailey, a senior consultant with iSEC Partners, gave a demonstration of his hacking ability at the Black Hat security and hacking conference in Las Vegas. For security reasons, Bailey refused to reveal the makes and models of cars which are susceptibl e to his hack. But he warned that the same hacking trick can be used to attack phones, cash machines and even industrial systems such as water and power supplies. 'I could care less if I could unlock a car door,' Bailey told CNN during the conference at Caesar's Palace. The hack works because some electronic components - such as remote car locks - accepts wireless signals that are vulnerable to interference. Bailey also explained that companies are able to protect their systems by purchasing more expensi ve parts, and while he admitted that it would push costs up significantly, he says it is important to ensure a safe balance. Bizarrely it was an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show that led him to the technology. The TV host was demonstrating an invention c alled the Zoombak, which could be used by parents to track their children. 'This was my thinking: "That's dangerous. That can definitely be owned. Let's own that thing",' he said. To 'own' something in hacker slang is to take control of it. Once he unders tood to to control the Zoombak, he was able to adapt the method to cars. - Full Article Source ITEM #219 08/08/11 - 'Credit card' tells if you have HIV within minutes and costs just $1 The size of a credit card, the mChip has proved almost 100 per cent accurate in testing for HIV in Rwanda. Hundreds of tests using a prototype were carried out in the town of Kigali and returned a 95 per cent accuracy for HIV and 76 per cent for syphilis. The plastic device, manufactured in the U.S. and developed by scientists at the University of Columbia in New York, costs just $1 (60p) to make. Lead researcher Professor Samuel Sia said: 'The idea is to make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw blood and then wait days for their results.' It contains ten detection zones which the blood passes through and then returns a positive or negative result for HIV/ AIDS or syphilis in about 15 minutes. The result is presented in a simple colour-coded manner similar to a pregnancy test, making it extremely easy to use and understand. An alternative is to use a cheap detector box - the 'lab' - to check the results. Th e mChip's low cost and efficiency has been hailed as a major breakthrough in the fight against HIV in the developing world. The mChip, on the other hand, is extremely cheap, can fit in an aid worker's pocket and produces a result with a high degree of acc uracy within 15 minutes. - Full Article Source ITEM #220 08/08/11 - Russian Surgeons Performed Successful Lung Transplantation Russian transplant surgeons from Sklifosovsky Science & Research Institute of Emergency, Moscow, performed a successful transplantation of lungs for a patient with severe lung pathology. A young woman suffered from lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a rare lung pa thology found only in women, during which a smooth muscle grows throughout the lungs. The only hope for her was lung transplantation. Unique surgery lasted for over 12 hours, after that the woman had a long rehabilitation period, and now she has normal li fe without any physical restrictions and oxygen masks. - Full Article Source ITEM #221 08/08/11 - Spray-on radiator cuts heating/cooling bills by 35% The product, named non-deformed energy storage phase change material, or PCM, works by storing excess heat from a room. The material can be set to store the heat when a room's temperature passes a certain level, for example the optimum room temperature of 22c. (22 degree Celsius = 71.6 degree Fahrenheit) It can also be applied anywhere, from the actual bricks of the home to the wallpaper inside. Currently, the material in the laboratory at the University's Centre for Sustainable Energy takes the form of a circular tablet, roughly the size of a large coin. But scientists, led by Professor Jo Darkwa and his colleague Oliver Su, have said that the material will work as a spray, forming a microscopic film on surfaces. Above a certain temperature the particle s within the spray melt, but instead of dripping, they are held in place by a special coating. The material then becomes a solid, releasing the heat into the room where it is being used. The scientists believe that their material, which could be used in e xisting buildings as well as new builds, could offer considerable energy savings. - Full Article Source ITEM #222 08/08/11 - The Single NPN Transistor Audio Preamp Here’s a great little project that goes well with the LM386 audio amp. It’s a good first time transistor project because it’s simple and demonstrates the common emitter class A amplifier circuit with only six components in the signal path. Here’s an excer pt from a great tutorial I found on NPN transistors: A “Class A Amplifier” operation is one where the transistors Base terminal is biased in such a way as to forward bias the Base-emitter junction. The result is that the transistor is always operating halfway between its cut-off and saturation regions, ther eby allowing the transistor amplifier to accurately reproduce the positive and negative halves of any AC input signal superimposed upon this DC biasing voltage. Without this “Bias Voltage” only one half of the input waveform would be amplified. This commo n emitter amplifier configuration using an NPN transistor has many applications but is commonly used in audio circuits such as pre-amplifier and power amplifier stages. I powered this circuit with a single 3V coin battery I salvaged from an old computer m otherboard. It works just fine at this low voltage because it’s just a preamp. Go build one and keep on hackin! / As the name probably suggests, the cornerstone of this amplifier is an NPN transistor. He explains that a forward bias is applied to the base -emitter junction, which results in the transistor operating halfway between its cut-off and saturation regions. Both halves of the input audio signal are superimposed on this bias voltage, resulting in a decent amount of gain across both channels from a relatively small package. - Full Article Source ITEM #223 08/08/11 - 12,000 square mile coverage with WRAN WIFI IEEE has just announced a new Wireless standard 802.22 that can cover up to 12,000 square miles. The standard is actually for Wireless Regional Area Networks or WRAN which uses the white spaces left in the TV frequency spectrum. This new wireless standard is expected to bring internet connectivity to large areas which are less densely populated that did not have coverage previously. The WRAN will be able to deliver up to 22 Mbps without interfering with existing TV broadcast stations. The network will fun ction with a series of base stations like current wireless networks, the customer will only need a small box installed in their house for internet access. It’s now only a matter of time that you will be able to pick up the same wireless network at work an d at home. / This new standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRANs) takes advantage of the favorable transmission characteristics of the VHF and UHF TV bands to provide broadband wireless access over a large area up to 100 km from the transmitter. Each WRAN will deliver up to 22 Mbps per channel without interfering with reception of existing TV broadcast stations, using the so-called white spaces between the occupied TV channels. This technology is especially useful for serving less densely populat ed areas, such as rural areas, and developing countries where most vacant TV channels can be found. IEEE 802.22 incorporates advanced cognitive radio capabilities including dynamic spectrum access, incumbent database access, accurate geolocation technique s, spectrum sensing, regulatory domain dependent policies, spectrum etiquette, and coexistence for optimal use of the available spectrum. - Full Article Source ITEM #224 08/08/11 - Blow your mind with the Brainwave Disruptor Whether you believe in it or not, the science behind brainwave entrainment is incredibly intriguing. [Rich Decibels] became interested in the subject, and after doing some research, decided to build an entrainment device of his own. If you are not familia r with the concept, brainwave entrainment theory suggests that low-frequency light and sound can be used to alter brain states, based on the assumption that the human brain will change its frequency to correspond to dominant external stimulus. [Rich’s] de vice is very similar to [Mitch Altman’s] “Brain Machine”, and uses both of these methods in an attempt to place the user in an altered state of mind. [Rich] installed a trio of LEDs into a set of goggles, wiring them along with a set of headphones to his laser-cut enclosure. Inside, the Brainwave Disruptor contains an Arduino, which is tasked with both generating light patterns as well as bit-banged audio streams. Well, how does it work? [Rich] reports that it performs quite nicely, causing both visual an d auditory hallucinations along with the complete loss of a sense of time. Sounds interesting enough to give it a try! - Full Article Source ITEM #225 08/08/11 - Mapping and Tracking Disasters in realtime Running out of things to worry about? Hisz.rsoe.hu is a Hungarian site that maps a lot of things going on in the world, disaster-wise. If there’s trouble, they want you to know about it. A world map has lots of points you can check. (They don’t do politic al problems.) On the day we visited the site, there were floods in India, China and Brazil, wildfires in Canada and Spain, environmental pollution on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, and car accidents all over the place. Clicking “details” bri ngs up more information on some events. - Full Article Source ITEM #226 08/08/11 - LIQUID AIR to RECLAIM LAND from NORTH SEA (May, 1931) ONE of the most astounding engineering feats of recent years—that of building a wall of solid ice with liquid air around a large portion of the North Sea—is now under consideration by German engineers. Adding thousands of acres to the continent of Europe, the ice dam will serve as a breakwater to enable the engineers to construct a permanent inner dike of concrete, and then proceed to fill the inclosed space with earth sucked up by a dredge from the bottom of the sea outside the ice wall, as illustrated i n the accompanying drawings. Engineers will set about building the ice dam by erecting a pipe line out into the sea to carry liquid air, which will reduce the temperature of the pipes to approximately 180 degrees below zero. The sea water coming in contac t with these pipes will congeal into ice, and the waves will then tend to form a solid ice wall to serve as a breakwater for the inclosed area. This much accomplished, engineers will then build a permanent concrete dike inside the ice wall, and by means o f a suction dredge fill in the reclaimed area with earth sucked up from the bottom of the sea outside the wall. - Full Article Source ITEM #227 08/08/11 - Getting a 2nd Opinion on the Cheap HealthcareMagic.com is the place for second opinions from doctors. For $10, you can send your question to a large pool of doctors and ask two follow-up questions when you get your answer. For $25, you can ask a top specialist by category. Joy asked a derm atologist about a spot on her forehead. He asked her to take a picture of it and email it back. His answer matched what her own dermatologist had said. - Full Article Source ITEM #228 08/08/11 - Internet Eats Into Time-Warner Cable Porn Profits "Big cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable keep saying they don't see Web video cutting into their business, but there's at least one big, dirty exception. Time Warner Cable said in its quarterly earnings report that its video-on-demand (VOD) business dropped significantly in the last quarter. Asked to explain where the drop came from, CEO Glenn Britt came clean, more or less: much of the drop is because, instead of renting a porn video in HD for $9.98, Time Warner's customers are getting the ir porn fix on the internet for free. 'One of the things going on with VOD is that there's been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down, largely because there's that kind of material available on the Internet for free,' says Br itt. 'And that's pretty high margin.' To be fair, drooping porn rentals don't account for all of Time Warner Cable's VOD decline. Chief Financial Officer Rob Marcus said that while 'the biggest piece of the year-over-year decline was in fact in the adult category,' the rest of the drop is because there weren't many big pay-per-view events like boxing matches last quarter, and because regular movie rentals are down, too." (It's what they get for being so greedy, charging so much for cable, now if we can ke ep the net lowcost, at least consumers will be happy, I am. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #229 08/08/11 - DOE Announces Philips As L Prize Winner "The DOE has officially announced a winner of the L Prize, giving the award to Philips in the 60W Incandescent Bulb replacement category. The goal of the L Prize competition is to 'develop high-quality, high-efficiency solid-state lighting products to rep lace the common light bulb.' Philips' LED light bulb won using less than 10W of power while claiming a life of greater than 25,000 hours. The light bulb is set to go on sale as early as spring of 2012." - Full Article Source ITEM #230 08/08/11 - Saving Gas Via Underpowered Death Traps "Yes, it's true that the fuel-economy standards the U.S. has been using cost lives. Economist Mark Jacobson has estimated that for every mile-per-gallon we raise the standards, 149 traffic fatalities occur per year. That would mean 1,490 deaths if the sta ndards were raised from, say, 30 miles-per-gallon to 40. But this doesn't have to be the case. It's possible, Jacobson has concluded, to increase fuel efficiency without also decreasing safety. And if government officials are smart, they'll tailor the reg ulations behind the new standards to do this." - Full Article Source ITEM #231 08/08/11 - In German Trials, Airport Body Scanners Easily Confused "The German government just finished a 10-month test of millimeter-wave body scanners made by L3 Communications. It appears they are not happy with the results. The devices raise false alarms 7 times out of 10, and are confused by layered clothing, boots, zippers, pleats, and even incorrect posture. Australia recently started a trial, and the second person in at the Sydney airport set off the alarm repeatedly due to sweaty armpits." - Full Article Source ITEM #232 08/08/11 - Google's Self Driving Car Crashes with Human at helm "We've all read previous stories on slashdot about Google's driverless car, and some have even pondered if a crash would bring the end to robotic cars. For better or for worse, we will all find out soon, as the inevitable has occurred. The question remain s, who is to blame. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that 'Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.'" / The spokesman also said that the company's fleet of robo cars has traveled 160,000 miles autonomously "without incident". This week's accident occurred in Mountain View. Google revealed the existence of its self-driving cars this past October, after the robo autos had already logged ove r 140,000 on public roads. Each car is equipped with video cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder that identifies other traffic. They find their way using maps previously collected by cars driven in more traditional ways – i.e., with a human at wheel. Though the cars can drive completely on their own, Google says they never go out on the road unmanned. A human always sits in the driver seat and can override the automated controls at any time. With this fallback in place, the California Departmen t of Motor Vehicles has deemed the cars legal, as has the state of Nevada. - Full Article Source ITEM #233 08/08/11 - ISPs Will Now Be Copyright Cops "Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, talks about the new plan by ISPs and content providers to 'crack down on what users can do with their internet connections' using a 6-step warning system to curb on line copyright infringement." - Full Article Source ITEM #234 08/08/11 - L.A. Artist Contemplates Future Traffic Flow, With Hot Wheels "American artist Chris Burden is finishing up his latest work titled Metropolis II for display this fall in Los Angeles. There's a fascinating five minute documentary on YouTube about his miniature city and the traffic that flows through it. He comments ' The idea that a car runs free, those days are about to close.' Whether you agree or disagree, he certainly has built one of the coolest Hot Wheels layouts I've ever seen." - Full Article Source ITEM #235 08/08/11 - DARPA Commits To Funding Useful Hacking Projects "Fahmida Y. Rashid reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will fund new cyber-security proposals under the new Cyber-Fast Track project intended to cut red tape for hackers to apply for funding for projects that would help the Defense Department secure computer networks, says Peiter Zatko, a hacker known as Mudge who was one of the seven L0pht members who testified before a Senate committee in 1998 that they could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes and is now a program manager for t he agency's information innovation office. Anything that could help the military will be considered, including bug-hunting exercises, commodity high-end computing and open software tools and projects with the potential to 'reduce attack surface areas, rev erse current asymmetries' are of particular interest. Under the Cyber-Fast Track initiative, DARPA will fund between 20 to 100 projects annually. Open to anybody, researchers can pitch DARPA with ideas and have a project approved and funded within 14 days of the application." (Need to do this with energy, transportation and gravity as well. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #236 08/08/11 - Liver Regeneration Drug Developed Russian researchers from Tomsk and Novosibirsk developed a basic substance for future treating agent for liver regeneration during cirrhosis. Liver cirrhosis is a severe disease, which is among ten most common death causes in patients from developed count ries. During cirrhosis healthy liver tissue transforms into connective tissue, which results in liver failure. New substance is an immobilized enzyme, which activates liver cells and makes them replace connective tissue with healthy liver tissue. Existing liver treating agents protect healthy cells, but not a single substance was able to replace connective tissue with healthy one. The substance is currently under preclinical trials. - Full Article Source ITEM #237 08/08/11 - Computers Could Grade Essay Tests Better Than Profs "Robot essay graders could be the answer to grade inflation. New software being tested turns over the task of grading to computers — this article has an interactive demo of the software. One professor says the computer is far fairer than human graders, wh o get tired and become inconsistent, or play favorites." - Full Article Source ITEM #238 08/08/11 - Army Gives Robo Jeeps a Go "four [of] Lockheed's Squad Mission Support System (SMSS) robot jeeps to Afghanistan where they'll haul supplies for troops. The trucks are being sent there as part of a test program to see just how useful robot cargo trucks can be. The 11-foot long truck s can carry a half a ton of supplies for up to 125 miles after being delivered to the field in a CH-47 or CH-53 helo." / The SMSS can either lock on to and follow the 3D profile of a soldier using its on-board sensors or it can use GPS to navigate along a pre-programmed route. Oh, and yes, there’s still the option for a man to hop in and drive it. Besides the obvious benefit of reducing the load carried by an infantryman (giving him more mobility and energy) the little trucks could be the first step towar d reducing the number of humans needed to ressuply bases. As many of you know, the military has taken to airlifting supplies to remote bases in an effort to take convoys of manned trucks off the road where they are vulnerable to ambushes and IED attacks. However, in time, it may be possible to use robo-trucks to resupply bases. - Full Article Source ITEM #239 08/08/11 - Anti-Matter Belt Discovered Around Earth "A thin band of antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time. The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters [arXiv] (Note: abstract free, full text paywalled), confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic fi eld could trap antimatter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and cosmic rays. Aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of the se antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft — an idea explored in a report for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts." - Full Article Source ITEM #240 08/08/11 - Making Microelectronics Out of Nanodiamond "Electrical engineers at Vanderbilt have created the basic components for computer chips out of thin films of nanodiamond. These combine the properties of vacuum tubes and solid state microelectronics and can operate in extreme environments where normal d evices fail." - Full Article Source ITEM #241 08/08/11 - Old-timey German nose-error-correcting contraption Text: SUCH NOSE ERRORS and similar will be quite significantly improved with the orthopedic nose former "Zello". The new and improved Model 20 exceeds all others. Double-layered padding clings exactly to the anatomical structure of the nose so that the af fected nasal cartilage is normal-shaped in a short time. (Bone deformities are not.) Most warmly recommended by Royal Court Advisor Dr. G. von Eck, M.D. and other medical authorities. 100,000 "Zello" in use. Price 5 Marks, 7 Marks, and 10 Marks and a 10% surcharge for a doctor's visit. (A model or impression is desired.) Specialist L. M. Baginski, Berlin W. 126, WInterfeldstr. - Full Article Source ITEM #242 08/05/11 - Use Your Car To Power Your House "Nissan has developed a system that allows a vehicle to supply electricity to power a house during a power outage or shortage. A prototype of the charging system running on a Nissan Leaf electric car was unveiled in Japan on Tuesday. A two-way charging de vice that would typically convert the household electricity supply to a voltage suitable for charging the car's battery can be reversed to feed power back into the household circuit." - Full Article Source ITEM #243 08/05/11 - Handheld magnetrons for making crop circles? Are planks and rope now obsolete crop circle technology? Physicist Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, posits that GPS, lasers, and handheld magnetrons may be the new tricks of the trade. He reports on his research in this month's issue of the journal Physics World. From the Institute of Physics: Microwaves, Taylor suggests, could be used to make crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position – a technique that could explain the speed and effic iency of the artists and the incredible detail that some crop circles exhibit. Indeed, one research team claims to be able to reproduce the intricate damage inflicted on crops using a handheld magnetron, readily available from microwave ovens, and a 12 V battery. As Taylor writes, “Crop-circle artists are not going to give up their secrets easily. This summer, unknown artists will venture into the countryside close to your homes and carry out their craft, safe in the knowledge that they are continuing the legacy of the most science-oriented art movement in history.” (And my version way back in 1990 - Crop Circles a Hoax? - Since the inception of SDI (the Star Wars program), Man has had the capability of projecting high intensity laser beams followed immediately by EXTREMELY high electrical charges aimed at targets on the planet. SDI uses very high intensity lasers (EXCIMER LASERS) to generate and project these beams of UltraViol et light. High intensity UV light cohered into laser beams IONIZES the air through which the beam passes thus creating a conducting path. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #244 08/05/11 - Invention combats mindless eating A dieter’s dream invented by two Clemson researchers just hit the market and is worn on the wrist like a watch to help people keep track of how much they eat and combat mindless eating. It’s called the Bite Counter, is manufactured in Mauldin, and the jus t released professional version sells for $799, said Eric Muth, a psychology professor, and Adam Hoover, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, who created it and started a company called Bite Technologies. It counts bites of food by tracking wrist movement. “It’s impossible to pick something up and put it in your mouth without moving your wrist. After a lot of studies we realized that this rolling the wrist is a simple common indicator regardless of how a person is eating or what they are ea ting,” Hoover said. A Clemson University patent is pending, according to university information. The two researchers began to look for a way to incorporate tracking technologies in a simple, wearable device. “We know that in order for people to use a devi ce it has to be simple to operate,” Muth said. All the user has to do is press a button before and after eating, Hoover said. They’ve personally tested the device. Hoover found it helped with portion control. - Full Article Source ITEM #245 08/05/11 - Inventor Aviso claims better use for P450-million fuel subsidy (450,000,000.00 PHP = 10,550,995.63 USD) - Filipino inventor Ismael Aviso, famous in online free energy circles for creating a self-charging electric car (e-car) technology, boldly stated that he could have done better things with the government’s P450-mi llion for fuel subsidy. By “better things,” the 54-year-old Aviso meant he could be sharing his technology to at least 2,000 public utility jeeps (PUJs) and taxis and turn them into green vehicles that are emission-free and most importantly do not run on petroleum. As the name implies, the socalled conversion kits – when retrofitted on a fuel-chugging vehicle – can transform it into an “Aviso e-car” whose properties have been dubbed as miraculous by various online sites. To name one, the converted cars ga in the ability to “recharge” by capturing invisible energy out of thin air. The spectacled Aviso, who owns a water-refilling business in Navotas City, has repeatedly pointed to the lack of funds as his biggest hurdle in bringing his invention to the massm arket. The inventor noted that in the long run, his green technology would be the ultimate solution to the ever-rising cost of fuel. - Full Article Source ITEM #246 08/05/11 - Quirky: The Solution to the Innovator's Dilemma Quirky, an online consumer products company with a social development twist: products for the people, created and designed by the people. "We're making invention accessible," Kaufman says during a whirlwind tour of Quirky's offices, which occupy the third floor of a building in SoHo, one of New York City's busiest retail corridors. "Ninety-nine percent of people are armchair inventors. They have great product ideas, but most don't have the time or money or expertise to make them happen." The goal at Quirk y is to change that, and ultimately become the global, go-to brand for everyone who's ever dreamed of becoming an inventor. Quirky's online community (65,000 members, and growing by 20 percent every month) is at the heart of Kaufman's effort to democratiz e invention. Each week hundreds of inventor hopefuls, or "ideators," submit their concepts online. Now under development are tons of practical, slightly whimsical, things that no one else has gotten around to making yet: an auto-stirring microwavable bowl with steam-release function; a modular tent-making kit for use with couch cushions and throw quilts; a yoga mat with magnetic or Velcro closures. To simplify the development process, product ideas must retail for less than $150 and should not require int egrated software. The community, composed mainly of hobby inventors, students, retirees and product-design enthusiasts, votes on the submissions. The two most popular ideas are sent to an in-house team of engineers and designers to research, render and pr ototype. At every stage--design, colors, naming, logo--the community chimes in. The best suggestions are incorporated, earning secondary "influencers" a portion of future sales revenue. Finally, if enough units of a product are pre-sold, Quirky will manuf acture it. While direct competitors have cropped up, Quirky remains one of the first companies that rewards participants' input with cash payments. Thirty cents of every revenue dollar goes back to influencers, and a number of them have already earned ten s of thousands of dollars. Under this business model, Quirky is winning, too. The company retains the rights to all the cool ideas that are voted into the development process, and because the company gets validation from thousands of potential customers b efore making a move, Kaufman avoids all the costs associated with early design phases. Quirky, he says, never has to pony up money for manufacturing unless measurable demand (in the form of pre-orders) is there--and there's no missing out on any opportuni ties, since customers tell you exactly what they want to buy. - Full Article Source ITEM #247 08/05/11 - Energy Independence for the United States -- How? This is the right time for the United States to seriously consider embarking on a bold investment of creating technology in energy that would reduce the cost of energy, create energy independence via renewable sources and attendant benefits of favorable t rade balance, employment, higher GDP growth, deficit reduction and national debt reduction. The energy independence platform of the U.S. administrations, from President Carter to President Obama, has not met goals for energy independence. This void can be filled by a determined decision to make the U.S. the world's largest producer of renewable energy. Since energy independence is a public issue, the government must invest in basic and applied research perhaps in the order of $2 trillion despite the curre nt status of high unemployment, high deficit, high national debt and high unfavorable balance of trade but because of it. A joint government -- university -- industry consortium is required to tackle the energy issue in a similar way that the government i nvented the computer, the internet and many other high tech societal innovations. With its track record, the United States has proven to overcome challenges time and again. The energy challenge is no exception. - Full Article Source ITEM #248 08/05/11 - Simple Device That Creates Energy from Ambient Heat The Monothermal is a tested, patented technology that creates power from ambient heat. Unlike most of the technologies for capturing energy from heat – which are either still in the laboratory or are so complex as to be nearly impractical – the Monotherma l utilizes common materials and is an incredibly simple construct that can be produced today. The Monothermal works in any environment when the effective ambient temperature falls within the viable range. It is not dependent on the limitations of the Ther moelectric Effect, further differentiating it from virtually every other method to collect energy from ambient heat that's been attempted. Finally, the constituent elements of the Monothermal become inert and thus safe for the environment when combined to create the final Monothermal laminate, making it a highly 'green' energy source. - Full Article Source ITEM #249 08/05/11 - Toyota Seeks Battery That Stores More Energy than Gasoline You might laugh off claims of major battery breakthroughs coming from a garage tinkerer or start-up company—but none other than Toyota has recently been presenting technical papers about quantum leaps in energy-storage capacity. The fact that Toyota resea rchers have been talking about next-generation battery technologies is significant for a few reasons. First, the company is better known for last-generation batteries for electric-drive cars—namely nickel-metal hydride that continues to power Toyota’s hyb rids. Second, Toyota has been among the most reluctant to offer plug-in cars—only really jumping in with both feet with last year’s tie-up with Tesla. Even today, the company continues to emphasize that plug-in cars with small batteries are a better route than big-battery EVs. Yet, if we can believe the numbers displayed on one particular graph that Toyota researchers continue to show at technical conferences, then batteries won’t need to be very big to offer a driving range similar to gasoline vehicles. The graph reveals that Toyota is focused on moving beyond lithium to solid state and metal air batteries. What jumps out at me is the X axis for energy density: As soon as you cross the “limit of conventional batteries,” and move into solid state technolo gy—replacing the electrolytic solution in lithium-ion batteries with a solid—the energy density per liter increases by a factor of 10. Metal air takes energy storage even further in the direction of a Sakichi battery. Is it time to start imagining a 100 k Wh battery fitting into the same space as today’s battery? Or at least a battery that could offer multiple hundreds of miles on a charge in an even smaller package than what you see in a car like the 2011 Nissan LEAF? Maybe not quite yet. It could be anot her decade or more before we move into the Sakichi era. But today’s electric cars already provide what typical U.S drivers require—while delivering a brisk enjoyable ride. With Toyota and other companies breathing down the neck of a battery breakthrough—w henever it does happen—we could push the range of electric cars from today’s 100 miles to multiple hundreds of miles. I can’t wait to see that day, and to see if such a development would finally silence the loudest critics of electric cars. - Full Article Source ITEM #250 08/05/11 - Radio show zeroes in on patent trolls "When Patents Attack," an hour-long episode that aired July 22, follows two reporters as they try to uncover whether investment firm/invention lab Intellectual VenturesbizWatch Intellectual Ventures Latest from The Business Journals Intellectual Ventures responds to scathing radio reportIntellectual Ventures criticizedIntellectual Ventures sues Dell, others for patent infringement Follow this company is actually a patent troll. Patent troll, as many of our readers will know, is the rather derogatory name given to companies that amass patents not to create technology or produce products but to use to sue other companies. Many in Silicon Valley, including Twitter investor Chris Sacca, who is interviewed in the story, believe firms like this are stifling inn ovation, costing legitimate companies billions in court fees and in defensively collecting patents they never intend to use, and putting companies out of business. In the story, reporters try to trace a patent awarded to then Silicon Valley entrepreneur C hris Crawford that is now being used by a company with connections to Intellectual Ventures to sue a smorgasbord of large tech companies. You can listen to the full episode "When Patents Attack" or read a transcript by following this link. You can find a response to the story by Intellectual Ventures and a solution offered by Forbes columnist Timothy B. Lee at This American Life's blog here. This American Life is produced by Public Radio International. - Full Article Source ITEM #251 08/05/11 - Could Finnish invention hold key to CO2 reduction? Using the system, CO2 from coal-fired power plants is diverted into a neutralisation facility in a silo-like structure. The gases are collected into a watery liquid, which is then filtered through feldspar minerals, which are produced as a by-product of m ining operations. The hydrogen ions are replaced by ions of alkali or alkaline earth metals. This produces a harmless bicarbonate fluid that can be dumped, while recovering potentially valuable aluminium compounds and other metals that can be re-used by i ndustry. - Full Article Source ITEM #252 08/05/11 - Gates Foundation Spearheads Revolutionary Toilet Invention The invention of the flush toilet has helped the world a lot in terms of economic growth and health. But now, that isn’t enough it seems because there are still about 1 billion people who defecate in the open! And 40 percent of people don’t have access to sanitary toilets. This is according to the World Health Organization. Bill Gates is aware of this and wants to change it through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their Foundation is giving grants amounting to $42 million to eight universities for t hem to develop a new kind of toiler that doesn’t need sewer connection, water, or electricity to operate. IT is hoped that the new system will improve people’s health and their way of lives. - Full Article Source ITEM #253 08/05/11 - Create your invention at TechShop The site at 800 Republic Drive will be designed to provide visionary minds with affordable tools to assist them in creating the tools they have always wanted to make and market, according to Jim Newton, TechShop founder and chairman. The shop will feature state-of-the-art tools including laser cutters, sheet metal equipment and plenty of welding equipment. For just $100 a month, members will have access to all of the equipment 24 hours a day. On-site staff will be available to assist and teach members of all skill levels. “We wanted this shop to be for anyone and everyone who has an idea and needs a place to produce it,” Newton said. Like most inventors, Newton said, he had a problem and was determined to fix it. He created TechShop simply because he want ed a place to go to create all of his inventions. - Full Article Source ITEM #254 08/05/11 - Paper-thin computers can be rolled up, stuffed in a pocket "This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper," declared creator Roel Vertegaal, director of the lab. "You interact with it by bending it into a cellphone, flipping the corner to turn pages or writing on it with a pen." Later, Vertegaal said the invention is a "smartphone prototype, called paperphone" that is "best described as a flexible iPhone." Whatever the technology is called, the researchers said it could be used in tablets, phones and other devices that will "shap e with your pocket." / PaperPhone is the world's first nextgen, thin film smartphone and interactive paper computer. It is based on a 3.7" flexible electrophoretic (E Ink) display that does not consume electricity when it is not refreshed. Thinfilm sensor s allow the phone to respond to bending of the screen to navigate pages in ebooks, play or pause mp3s, make phone calls, or navigate apps. A flexible wacom tablet allows users to draw on the screen with a pen as if it were a sheet of paper. - Full Article Source ITEM #255 08/05/11 - Claims correlating IQ with browser choice was a hoax A bunch of sites are reporting that the "study" that claimed to correlate IQ with browser choice was a hoax. The funny thing is, the hoaxy part everyone's up in arms about is that the correlation was faked. But surely's the most damning element of this "s tudy" is that it used IQ as a meaningful proxy for "intelligence." If someone came up with a study that correlated star-signs, biorhythms, Meyers-Briggs types, or auras with browser choice, and then it was revealed that the data was fudged, would the fudg ing really be the most damning fact about the study's validity? - Full Article Source ITEM #256 08/05/11 - Volunteer Towns Sought For Nuclear Waste "Brian Wingfield writes in Bloomberg that the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has sent a draft report to Energy Secretary Steven Chu recommending that US communities should be encouraged to vie for becoming a federal nuclear-waste site as a way to end a decades-long dilemma over disposing of spent radioactive fuel and says this 'consent-based' approach will help cut costs and end delays caused when the federal government picks a site over the objections of local residents, 'This means e ncouraging communities to volunteer (PDF) to be considered to host a new nuclear-waste management facility,' says the commission. Chu named the panelists after Obama canceled plans to build a permanent repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain after the Yucca site was opposed by politicians from the state. 'The United States has traveled nearly 25 years down the current path only to come to a point where continuing to rely on the same approach seems destined to bring further controversy, litigation, and protr acted delay,' says the report. The Blue Ribbon Commission cited as a 'success' the US Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, which has accepted and disposed of some defense-related nuclear waste for more than a decade demonstrating that th at 'nuclear wastes can be transported safely over long distances and placed securely in a deep, mined repository.' With the right incentives, 'there will be a great deal of support' for a waste site near the New Mexico facility, says former Senator Pete D omenici." - Full Article Source ITEM #257 08/05/11 - Invention makes water from moisture in the air A Texas man isn't bothered by the drought affecting the entire nation due to his invention that can make water out of the air. Terry LeBleu's invention is called the Drought-Master, and it pulls moisture-laden air through the machine's generator, condense s it and then exhausts the purified air. "These make pure water," said LeBleu. "The water never touches the ground. It is strictly straight out of the air. We have oceans of water in the air, in the sky. All you have to do is pull it out and condense it d own." After the water is captured then it is filtered and becomes drinkable. "It is ready on demand. It is good emergency water," LeBleu explained. The patented machine is now on the market and plugs into an electrical outlet. The machine produces 5 to 7 gallons of water a day. To ensure the water collected was healthy to drink, LeBleu sent samples to Stevens Ecology in Mosier, OR, for analysis. Test results showed that the water LeBleu's machine makes is free of metals like zinc and copper, and has no co liform bacteria. LeBleu said the company likened his water to sterilized distilled water. A few Hill Country residents have LeBleu's machine in and around their homes. - Full Article Source ITEM #258 08/05/11 - NASA's Plan To Clean Up Space Program Launch Site Contamination Plans from NASA and the US Air Force to clean up the areas around the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which have been contaminated with decades worth of carcinogenic chemicals from launching Shuttles, the Apollo moon missions, a nd other rockets. The KSC cleanup is expected to take 30 years, and will cost an estimated $96 million. "By far, the most common contaminant is a chlorinated solvent called trichloroethylene, or 'trike,' and its breakdown products — substances known to ca use birth defects and cancer and reaching concentrations thousands of times higher than federal drinking water standards allow. ... Kennedy's sandy, alkaline soils are thought to neutralize most metals and other contaminants before they become a problem u p the food chain. But trike dies hard. And workers kept pouring it into the ground in the early years of the shuttle program, thinking it would evaporate." - Full Article Source ITEM #259 08/05/11 - Ground-Based GPS Mimic Is Inch Perfect "For several years the U.S. Air Force has used WiFi-router-sized boxes on a New Mexico missile range to create a GPS-like service to track munitions to the nearest inch. Now the Australian company behind the technology is rolling it out for civilians. One gold mine is already using the tech and specifications are being released so that GPS receiver manufacturers can adopt the technology. Locata hopes that construction sites, factories and city governments will all want to install their own high accuracy ' location hotspots.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #260 08/05/11 - Making Graphics In Games '100,000 Times' Better? "A small Australian software company — backed by almost AUD$2 million in government assistance — is claiming they've developed a new technology which is '100,000 times better' for computer game graphics. It's not clear what exactly is getting multiplied, but they apparently 'make everything out of tiny little atoms instead of flat panels.' They've posted a video to YouTube which shows their new tech, which is apparently running at 20 FPS in software. It's (very) light on the technical details, and extraor dinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but they say an SDK is due in a few months — so stay tuned for more." - Full Article Source ITEM #261 08/05/11 - 800Mbps Wireless Network Made With LED Light Bulbs "German scientists working at Berlin's Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications have set a new world record for Visible Light Communication technology after they succeeded in using regular red, blue, green and white LED light bulbs as the basis for bui lding a new 800Mbps capable ultrafast Wireless Local Area Network. Dr. Anagnostis Paraskevopoulos explained: 'With the aid of a special component, the modulator, we turn the LEDs off and on in very rapid succession and transfer the information as ones and zeros. The modulation of the light is imperceptible to the human eye. A simple photo diode on the laptop acts as a receiver. The diode catches the light, electronics decode the information and translate it into electrical impulses, meaning the language o f the computer.' The solution, which could be installed on ceilings and would cover approximately 10 square meters, would be ideal for HD video streaming and inside Hospitals or Aircraft where traditional Wi-Fi is often banned. However visible light signa ls can easily be blocked, such as when a hand is passed in front of the transmitter." - Full Article Source< /p> ITEM #262 08/05/11 - Escaping Infinite Loops An MIT news release about Jolt, a research project designed to unfreeze software stuck in an infinite loop (for a subset of infinite loops). It uses a combination of static instrumentation (using LLVM) and a run time watchdog that checks the program state during loop iteration; when a duplicate state is detected it permits the user to take one a few actions to escape the loop. The authors claim it works well enough that the program can often continue operating properly. The original paper contains detaile d case studies. (A company I worked at used badge readers all over the place, maybe 30 of them. The building was metal so everytime there was an electrical storm, the computer in almost every badge reader would lock up. So I put a simple 555 monostable ti mer to watch the computer timing LED. If it didn't flash every second like it should, the 555 would activate a relay that would reset the computer, voila, self-correcting hardware. - JWD) - Full Article Source ITEM #263 08/05/11 - Amazon App Store 'Rotten To the Core,' Says Dev "Amazon's biggest feature by far, has been their Free App Of The Day promotion. Publicly their terms say that they pay developers 20% of the asking price of an app, even when they give it away free. To both consumers and naive developers alike, this seems like a big chance to make something rare in the Android world: real money. But here's the dirty secret Amazon don't want you to know, they don't pay developers a single cent. ... Amazon is being predatory here, and asking developers (who are often desper ate for exposure) to give away their app, in order to promote Amazon. In the end we agreed that we had entered the world of Android development as an experiment, and it would seem silly not to add more data to the experiment we were conducting. The day of our promotion came: ... Amazon gave away 101,491 copies of our app! At this point, we had a few seconds of excitement as well; had we mis-read the email and really earned $54,800 in one day? We would have done if our public agreement was in place, but we can now confirm that thanks to Amazon's secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day. That's right, over 100,000 apps given away, $0 made." - Full Article Source ITEM #264 08/05/11 - Limits On Growth of Energy Use and Economies "Dr. Tom Murphy, professor of astrophysics at UCSD, has a new blog called 'Do The Math,' and the first few posts are doozies. In the first, he shows the impossibility of continued exponential growth in energy use. Even if a new, 'free' energy source is de veloped, thermodynamic limits on efficiency mean that the heat associated with converting this energy into useful work will increase the temperature of the earth to unbearable levels within 300 years. In the second, he extends the argument to economic gro wth. The timescales there are faster, only 50-100 years. Fascinating stuff. Time to stop breeding, folks, or to get our butts into space." - Full Article Source ITEM #265 08/05/11 - Earth May Once Have Had Two Moons "According to a story at space.com, Earth may once have had two moons. The smaller moon, estimated to be 750 miles (1200km) wide and only 4% of the mass of the larger moon, crashed into the far side of the larger moon which caused the features we see toda y on the moon. The surface of the far side of the moon is quite different than the side facing the earth, having a different composition and a much rougher terrain." - Full Article Source ITEM #266 08/05/11 - Monitor Household Energy From Your Smartphone "People Power 1.0 is an open and extensible cloud-based platform that allows you to monitor up-to-the-minute household energy usage from an iPhone or Android smartphone. Part of the growing Internet of Things, People Power 1.0 brings energy monitoring to the common household. It works through your house router to connect to the Internet and send data to your smartphone. Or you can measure energy consumption from individual devices with People Power's GreenX Powerstrips." - Full Article Source ITEM #267 08/05/11 - Building Material Absorbs and Releases Heat "Researchers at the Ningpo, China campus of the University of Nottingham (UNNC) have created a new heat-regulating material that could be used to cut the heating and cooling costs of buildings. The non-deformed storage phase change material (PCM) can be f ixed so that it starts absorbing any excess heat above a pre-determined temperature and releasing stored heat when the ambient temperature drops below the set point. The researchers say the material can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes, ev en small enough so that it can be sprayed as a microscopic film to surfaces in existing buildings." - Full Article Source< /font> ITEM #268 08/05/11 - Smart Power Grid Could Wreak Havoc On Itself "Smart power grid monitoring that lets you pick the exact cheapest time to run the dishwasher or recharge your electric car may put too much power (so to speak) in the hands of the consumer, according to a new study by MIT. Researchers say that users rece iving minute-by-minute pricing information might cycle off-peak power use more rapidly than utilities can spool up their power plants. In other words, it's OK if you're the only person charging your Chevy Volt at 2am in the morning, but if a whole town do es it exactly the same time... there will be issues." - Full Article Source ITEM #269 08/05/11 - New Chip Can Identify Liquids, Encode Messages "Scientists have developed a porous chip that can identify liquids instantaneously. Each liquid's distinct surface tension determines how much it seeps into the pores of the chip, which the chip uses to tell liquids apart. The researchers also decorated t he chip with a secret message (ie, brand name) that only shows up when certain liquids are applied. The chip is so sensitive it can distinguish gasolines with varying proportions of ethanol, and could help clean-up crews identify spills in the field." - < a href="http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/04/2227217/New-Chip-Can-Identify-Liquids-Encode-Messages" target="_blank" >Full Article Source ITEM #270 08/05/11 - Online Parody Cartoon Targeted For Prosecution "It seems that the Renton (suburb of Seattle) police need a remedial course on the U.S. Constitution," linking to a story at Seattle TV station KIRO which says "The Renton City Prosecutor wants to send a cartoonist to jail for mocking the police departmen t in a series of animated Internet videos. The 'South-Park'-style animations parody everything from officers having sex on duty to certain personnel getting promoted without necessary qualifications. While the city wants to criminalize the cartoons, First Amendment rights advocates say the move is an 'extreme abuse of power.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #271 08/01/11 - Dr. Brian O'Leary passed away July 29 , 2011 A remarkable person who left us too soon. I should say RIP Brian, but I know, if parallel universes exist and quantum jumping is possible, you'll continue to help us accomplish in this world what you and many of us dreamed of. Brian O'Leary was a leading voice in the new energy and planetary sustainability movements; he will be greatly missed. / Brian Todd O'Leary (January 27, 1940 - July 28, 2011) was an American scientist, author, and former NASA astronaut. He was a member of the sixth group of astronau ts selected by NASA in August 1967. The members of this group of eleven were known as the scientist-astronauts, intended to train for the Apollo Applications Program - a follow-on to the Apollo Program, which was ultimately canceled. He is currently an ad vocate of utilizing exotic energy sources to resolve humanity’s energy problems. - Full Article Source ITEM #272 08/01/11 - Transmutation of Aluminum to Magnesium? My first book 20th century Alchemy is now available in a down load or baberback at http://producepreciousmetals.com/ Second item will shock, amy. July 29. 2011 LENC has entered a the comercial production of Cold fusion AKA free energy. On demand we can ch ange 300 grams of aluminum into magnesium in 3600 seconds. Verfied by XRF analysis. Dr. Champion http://drjoechampion.com/ - Full Article Source ITEM #273 08/01/11 - Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making bette r mistakes. - Full Article Source ITEM #274 08/01/11 - Technology is the new smoking You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or whatever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever ‘gone to the bathroom’ in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter? Out of 1000 people surveyed after being cut off from the Internet for 24 hours, 53% reported feeling ‘upset’ about being deprived of online access and 40% said that they felt lonely after not being able to connect to the Internet. Participants described the digital detox akin to quitting drinking or smoking. - Full Article Source ITEM #275 08/01/11 - Fibonacci Sequence animated in mesmerizing video We all learned about the Fibonacci numbers in school. If you need a refresher course, the integers in the Fibonacci sequence start with 0 and 1. Each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two, so the third number in the sequence is 1, the fourth nu mber, is 2, the fifth number is 3, and so on. The Fibonacci spiral is something we see every day in nature but never really pay much attention to. However, an amazing YouTube video called “Nature By Numbers” puts the mathematical sequence into perspective for us… - Full Article Source ITEM #276 08/01/11 - New Material Lets Electrons 'Dance' and Form New State The material, gallium arsenide, is used to observe states in which electrons no longer obey the laws of single-particle physics, but instead are governed by their mutual interactions. Manfra and his research team designed and built equipment called a high -mobility gallium-arsenide molecular beam epitaxy system, or MBE, that is housed at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center. The equipment makes ultrapure semiconductor materials with atomic-layer precision. The material is a perfectly aligned lattice of gal lium and arsenic atoms that can capture electrons on a two-dimensional plane, eliminating their ability to move up and down and limiting their movement to front-to-back and side-to-side. "We are basically capturing the electrons within microscopic wells a nd forcing them to interact only with each other," he said. "The material must be very pure to accomplish this. Any impurities that made their way in would cause the electrons to scatter and ruin the fragile correlated state." The electrons also need to b e cooled to extremely low temperatures and a magnetic field is applied to achieve the desired conditions to reach the correlated state. Gabor Csathy, an assistant professor of physics, is able to cool the material and electrons to 5 millikelvin -- close t o absolute zero or 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit -- using special equipment in his lab. "At room temperature, electrons are known to behave like billiard balls on a pool table, bouncing off of the sides and off of each other, and obey the laws of clas sical mechanics," Csathy said. "As the temperature is lowered, electrons calm down and become aware of the presence of neighboring electrons. A collective motion of the electrons is then possible, and this collective motion is described by the laws of qua ntum mechanics." The electrons do a complex dance to try to find the best arrangement for them to achieve the minimum energy level and eventually form new patterns, or ground states, he said. - Full Article Source ITEM #277 08/01/11 - The End of Publishing Simply Brilliant! - Full Article Source ITEM #278 08/01/11 - We're sitting ourselves to death Weight gain is just one problem that's been associated with excessive sitting. The list of others is long: heart problems, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dangerous blood clots and some musculo-skeletal conditions. To put it bluntly, as David Dunstan does, "people who are high sitters have increased risk of premature death". Dunstan is head of the physical activity laboratory at Melbourne's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. He compares the sitting epidemic to awareness about the dangers of sun damage 20 years ago. One American expert goes further, calling sitting "the new smoking". Dunstan says: "We're starting to understand that this is a potentially large public health problem. It's such an insidious behaviour that it's sort of flown under the radar ." Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, after years of campaigns pumping that message. And that's still true, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't matter not when it comes to mitigating the risks of sitting down for too long. "These are two distinct public health hazards too much sitting and too little exercise," Dunstan says. "And I guess this is going to be a bit sobering for people who do go out and do their 30 minutes of brisk walking but then ignore the potential harmful effects of s itting for another 15 1/2 hours." You can actually die in your seat if you're very unlucky. - Full Article Source ITEM #279 08/01/11 - Do you have a suggestion for IDEAFEED? The Ideafeed is now open for submissions! A place where big ideas and the news cycle meet, the Ideafeed combines our interest in the here and now with ideas that provide context to the world we share. We want to spread the word about the best ideas on the web and we are inviting you, our readers, to help shape the conversation. If you know of a recent story with big implications, you can let us know about it at ideafeed@bigthink.com. We look forward to hearing from you! - Full Article Source ITEM #280 08/01/11 - Communicating through earth with Magnetic fields Dave LeVan, software engineer Tom Parks and others from Lockheed have designed and built a new means for miners and would-be rescuers to communicate by text and voice. Called MagneLink, the devices use magnetic waves to wirelessly broadcast through hundre ds of feet of earth. The idea began in 2006 when the deadly Sago, W.Va., coal mine disaster prompted retired Lockheed engineer Gary Smith to write to his former supervisor. He asked if there was something Lockheed, a technology company with expertise in r adar and sonar, could develop to allow trapped miners to call for help. Radio was out. Radio waves can travel hundreds of miles through the air, but their energy is quickly absorbed by the walls and ceilings of a mine. But, LeVan said, pioneers in radio a nd electricity had once looked into communicating by means of magnetic fields. They discarded the technology more than 100 years ago when they found that electric waves traveled so much farther through the air. But through ground, magnetic waves travel fa rther. LeVan found magnetic waves could be broadcast hundreds and, with enough power, thousands of feet through rock. In a disaster, miners below ground would go to an alcove along the side of the mine, activate the armored unit, wrap 400 feet of wire aro und any nearby column to create a sending antenna and plug in a 2-foot-square box that contains the receiving antenna. On the surface, rescuers would plug a receiving antenna into the suitcase unit and lay out a 400-foot loop of wire on the ground. “It on ly takes a couple of minutes,” LeVan said. Turned on, the machines can send and receive text messages tapped out on a modified qwerty keyboard, or people at either end can pick up a telephone handset and talk. The low-powered unit in the mine can send and receive through 1,200 feet of earth, LeVan said. That’s enough to reach from the lowest levels of 80 percent of coal mines in the United States, he said. The higher-powered surface unit can send a signal much farther, Gross said. LeVan has received two p atents already. LeVan and Parks have submitted six more to the patent office. - Full Article Source ITEM #281 08/01/11 - Fight Brewing Over Off-Grid Energy Storage, Says Lux Battery, flywheel, ultracapacitor and fuel cell developers need to act now if they wish to tap the $4B market for off-grid applications, says Lux Research. Struggling to get their feet in the door of transportation and grid-tied markets, emerging electric al storage developers have begun eying off-grid opportunities as a way to attain scale and lower costs. But the off-grid market represents a rapidly closing window of opportunity for emerging storage – only developers who take immediate and intelligent ac tion will capture a meaningful share of the market, according to a new report by Lux Research. The report, titled “Off-grid: A Modest Meal for Starving Storage Developers,” forecasts opportunities for emerging battery, flywheel, ultracapacitor, and fuel c ell technologies in off-grid markets, such as telecommunication networks, datacenters, and mobile and semi-permanent military bases. The off-grid storage market will grow from $9.9 billion in 2011 to $13.5 billion in 2016, a 6% compound annual growth rate . Emerging technologies will be the fastest growing segment of the market, growing from $1.5 billion in 2011 in 2011 to about $4 billion in 2016, a 22% CAGR. - Full Article Source ITEM #282 08/01/11 - Wealthy Families Back $1.4 Billion Cleantech Fund Eleven families plan to pump a whopping $1.4 billion into a first-of-its-kind Cleantech Syndicate that will invest clean energy over the next five years. Private wealth managers McNally Capital and Black Coral Capital co-founded the syndicate last year. The participating families are collectively worth more than $30 billion. The syndicate will primarily support investments in solar, energy efficiency, green chemistry, water, wind, biomass and geothe rmal. According to a published investment criteria, the syndicate: "[S]eeks opportunities with a visible path to near or medium-term commercialization; high-quality management teams willing to stay and invest alongside the syndicate; obtainable board governance rights; and the potential to leverage or complement syndi cate members’ operating businesses." The families are also supporting the syndicate’s investments by devoting 17 investment professionals to manage the effort. - Full Article Source ITEM #283 08/01/11 - Nano-Structured Metals Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and several institutes in Russia worked together to develop a simple method to modify the internal structure of any metal at the nano-size scale. This is the scale of a cluster of a few hundred, or a few thou sand atoms, which is the scale on which many biological processes occur. Modifying metals at this scale allows them to better match and integrate with human bone tissue. Understanding this breakthrough is best by comparing the size of the fundamental buil ding blocks of metals with cells, one of the building blocks of the human body. Metals are built with crystals, also known as grains, whose size is typically between 20µm and 80µm, slightly smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Bone cells are smaller than metal grains, generally having dimensions between 4µm and 10µm. Therefore, when bone-forming osteoblast cells attach to the smooth surface of metals, multiple cells bind to a single grain. This is not ideal. Therefore, orthopedic device makers typic ally modify the metal surface to enhance bone-metal integration. They use chemical etching, bead blasting, or coatings to roughen the metal surface to create smaller scale features that enhance the ability of cells to mechanically-interlock and more firml y attach to the metal. In contrast, nano-structuring changes metals so completely that the fine scale interlocking ability is built in at any surface, as well as throughout the interior volume. The need for additional surface treatment is reduced or elimi nated in nano-structured metals. In addition, having the fine scale features throughout the bulk of the metal remarkably improves other metal properties, including strength, cyclic load resistance, corrosion resistance, machinability, and forgability. Nan o-structuring metals also reduce the size of their constituent grains to a range between 0.02µm and 0.40µm. When bone forming osteoblast cells contact a nano-structured metal surface, they cover many grains simultaneously. This offers multiple advantages. - Full Article Source ITEM #284 08/01/11 - What are 'Green Jobs'? The majority of green jobs in the United States are actually jobs in waste management (garbage), mass transit, and other non-energy areas, and those jobs are not stimulus-related. Even including those mature jobs, the green or “clean economy” jobs represe nt just 2 percent of all jobs in the United States, and renewable energy jobs, those touted by the Administration as being “green”, make up just 5 percent of the “clean economy” jobs. That compares modestly to the largest sector of the economy—health care —employing 10.2 percent of all jobs, but unlike health care employment, “clean economy” jobs are growing slower than the U.S. economy. A new report has been released by the Brookings Institution and the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice that define s “green jobs” and counts them.[ii] According to the report, the “clean” or “green” economy is a sector of the economy that is low carbon and “that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit.”[iii] And, according to the report, the “clean e conomy” employs 2.7 million Americans. That number of employees is less than the IT industry in the United States, but more than the biosciences and slightly more than the fossil fuel industry according to the authors. It should be noted that the American Petroleum Institute in a 2009 study indicates that the oil and natural gas industry supported 9.2 million jobs in 2007, 2.1 million of those jobs were direct jobs. Most (over 90 percent) of the “clean or green jobs” are in mature industry segments that c over activities including manufacturing and public services such as wastewater and mass transit, and they are clearly not new. A smaller portion of the “clean economy” encompasses newer segments, including solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, fuel cell, smart g rid, biofuel, and battery industries that the Administration is trying to promote. “Green jobs” in the renewable energy industry supply less than 200,000 U.S. jobs and over a quarter of those jobs are in the hydroelectric industry. But, if we use the defi nition supplied by Brookings and Battelle that defines the “clean economy” as providing goods and services with an environmental benefit, then the job figure jumps to 2.7 million, which is still a modest 2 percent of U.S. jobs. The majority of the jobs th at fit this definition, over 90 percent, are not in the renewable energy field and the largest segments are in waste management (garbage) and the public transportation fields, jobs that have been in existence for decades and even centuries. - Full Article Source ITEM #285 08/01/11 - Is Islam Compatible with Capitalism? The transition from the Arab world’s authoritarian regimes to democracy, markets, and the rule of law is far from guaranteed, of course. For a reminder of the difficulty of installing successful Western-style capitalism, consider Rifaa, who returned to Eg ypt after seven years in France and became the pasha’s main advisor—overseeing the translation of French scientific books into Arabic, founding the first Arabic newspapers, and opening schools for girls. Though Rifaa faced the hostility of Muslim conserva tives, his reforms, accompanying the era’s shifts in sharia, inaugurated an era of modernization in Egypt. By the late nineteenth century, Cairo was starting to look like a European city, with electricity, sanitation, universities, and an independent pres s. But the renaissance didn’t last long, because Rifaa repeatedly failed to persuade the pasha to accept a Western-style constitution, which would have limited the ruler’s arbitrary power. What kept Egypt back was its failure to establish the rule-governe d institutions familiar in the West. It should be sobering, therefore, that the military isn’t likely to surrender its political privileges easily in any Arab country. Still, most of the political parties emerging in the ferment are supporters of free mar kets. (Some socialist parties remain in Morocco and Tunisia, where the French influence left its mark, but they are socialist in name only.) The young men and women behind the Arab Spring will continue to push for more open markets where millions of Bouaz izis will be able to become entrepreneurs—where it won’t take two years and countless bribes to open a bakery. And there appears to be no cultural or religious reason that someday, in the not-so-distant future, we won’t find cafés in Cairo that run as eff iciently and reasonably as those in Marseille. - Full Article Source ITEM #286 08/01/11 - GE 13watt LED bright as a 60W bulb General Electric Lighting announced Friday that it will soon sell an alternative to a standard 60-watt light bulb -- and it won't be the CFL that so many consumers dislike. GE said it will sell a 13-watt LED bulb by November designed to replace the standa rd 60-watt incandescent bulb - the old-fashioned bulb we're all used to. The new bulb will be dimmable. There are dozens of compact fluorescent bulbs already available that easily meet the standards because they are about 75 percent more efficient than a standard incandescent. And they are supposed to last years rather than months. But the CFL bulbs can cost at least $1 each, while old-fashioned bulbs are 35 cents to 50 cents each. But there has been a backlash against CFL bulbs among some consumers - and among Republican members of Congress who tried unsuccessfully a couple of weeks ago to block the new efficiency rules with a special bill. Some consumers don't like the quality of the light from a CFL. Others are afraid of the 1 milligram to 5 milligrams of mercury a CFL contains. And still others just think the government has no business setting efficiency standards. So, the "gold standard" has become the LED -- or "light emitting diode" --a bulb that will last decades and use so little power that it wi ll pay for itself over and over. But LED bulbs are in a different price universe. When GE last December unveiled its 9-watt replacement for the standard, old fashioned 40-watt bulb, it listed the price at $49.99. The GE Energy Smart LED contains none of t he mercury of a compact fluorescent, screws into any standard socket and is rated to last 22.8 years, or 25,000 hours - saving you the $85 over its lifetime, compared with an incandescent bulb at today's electric rates. GE did not announce a price Friday for the 13-watt LED that will replace the 60-watt incandescent. - Full Article Source ITEM #287 08/01/11 - Qatar Solar Generator Al Sada was inspired by a documentary about global warming to focus on a solar-powered generator for his final project. After testing 65 different solar panels, this young visionary chose the one that is best equipped to handle Qatar’s specific climate. H is 60 kw prototype that can be mounted on the tents’ roofs is lighweight, cheap, and compact, according to Trust.org, and has been tested in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and Libya. High-end solar-powered camps - Without any of the carbon emissions associated with diesel generators, Al Sada’s invention can power high end desert camps – complete with air conditioning, refrigerators and television – for up to 50 people. He also believes that his model can be scaled up to provide solar energy for small homes and vil lages throughout the Arab world. A wonderful role model, the inventor told Trust: “My main emphasis is on teaching them to do things themselves, and to tell them about renewable energy and recycling,” adding that “We often talk about global warming and cl imate change and they teach me many new things as well. It’s good to learn from our children.” Per capita, Qatar nationals consume more energy than any other country in the world. Much of that energy is spent on producing clean water. Unlike its vast sola r resources, neither the country’s oil or natural gas reserves are infinite or renewable. Al Sada has a dream: before he dies, he hopes to see solar-powered smart houses and a solar farm in Qatar, something that he believes could be catalyzed if the contr oversial World Cup 2022 project is successful. - Full Article Source ITEM #288 08/01/11 - New Products Hasten Return of PROSPERITY (Feb, 1933) How Inventors’ Activity Is Swelling the Growing Tide of Business MANY times has the statement been made that prosperity will return through the appearance of a great new invention which will create a new industry just as the development of the automobile, the movies, the radio, has added billions to the national wealth of the United States in the past. Prosperity depends upon the circulation of money. And, this circulation is most quickly increased by the introduction of new products so attractive and val uable the public is compelled to buy them. - Full Article Source ITEM #289 08/01/11 - Hackers' Flying Drone Now Eavesdrops On GSM Phones "At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year's worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perk ins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot-long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack-sized on-bo ard Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools, including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae. On top of cracking Wi-Fi networks, the upgraded WASP n ow also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane's antenna rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on 32 gigs of st orage." - Full Article Source ITEM #290 08/01/11 - The End of the Gas Guzzler "Michael Grunwald reports that President Obama will announce today a near-doubling of fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, and the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — will support it in a final deal that will require vehicle fle ets to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, which will reduce fuel consumption by 40% and carbon emissions by 50%. Although environmentalists had pushed for 60 mpg and the White House had floated a compromise of 56.2, 54.5 is pretty close, considering t hat last year's standards were only 28.3. 'I might point out that the same auto industry that ran attack ads about how 56.2 would destroy their businesses and force everyone to drive electric cars has embraced 54.5 as an achievable target,' writes Grunwal d. 'It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #291 08/01/11 - Microsoft Exposes Locations of PCs and Phones "Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web without taking the privacy precautions that competitors have, CNET has learned. The vast database avai lable through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets. Unlike Google and Skyhook Wireless, which have compiled similar lists of these unique Wi-Fi addresses, Microsoft has not taken any measures to curb access to its database." - < b>Full Article Source ITEM #292 08/01/11 - MIT Unveils Sun-Free Photovoltaics "Researchers at MIT just unveiled a new solar power generator that doesn't need sunlight to function. The button-sized power generator can tap energy from heat, the sun's rays, a hydrocarbon fuel, or a decaying radioisotope, and it can run three times lon ger than a lithium-ion battery of the same weight. It is hoped that the technology may one day be used to generate power for spacecraft on long-term missions where sunlight may not be available." - Full Article Source ITEM #293 08/01/11 - Circuit Flaws Blamed For China Train Crash "The Xinhua news agency reports that a signaling equipment circuit design flaw and lack of safety alertness in railway management caused a high-speed train to ram into a stalled train near the city of Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday, leaving 40 people dead and 191 injured. A lightning strike triggered the malfunction, which resulted in a green alert light failing to turn red, leaving railway personnel unaware of the stalled train, the official said. The Beijing National Railway Resea rch and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Co., which was responsible for designing and building the signaling system, has posted an apology letter on its website, offering condolences and promising to 'shoulder any due punishments that may resu lt from the investigation.' Domestic media has raised more questions over the explanation. 'Why was such seriously flawed equipment in use for nearly two years without being detected? Why was it installed in as many as 76 rail stations across the country? Are there other problems with the railway apart from equipment flaws?'" - Full Article Source ITEM #294 08/01/11 - AT&T To Start Data Throttling Heaviest Users "AT&T has announced that starting on Oct. 1 it will throttle the data speeds of users with unlimited data plans who exceed bandwidth thresholds on its 3G network. AT&T is following in the tracks Verizon and Virgin Mobile in reducing data throughput speeds of its heaviest mobile data users." - Full Article Source ITEM #295 08/01/11 - Why Public Email Needs a Police Force "Those of us who had email addresses in the early days of the Internet age remember sending notes to webmaster email addresses to report malicious email behavior — and actually getting a response back. But today, a huge majority of mail comes from public services like Gmail or Yahoo mail, and getting anyone at those companies to take responsibility for abusive users is nearly impossible. 'If they could agree on a third-party service that could be the receptacle on a 24/7 basis for rapid account suspension , the 419 Fraud problem might dwindle down to a trickle quickly. It would take trust among the email providers to do this, but it would also alleviate big problems that law enforcement officials are usually unable to handle. Call them the email cops.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #296 08/01/11 - Foxconn To Employ 1 Million Robots "Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency. Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components, which assembles products for Apple, S ony and Nokia, employing 1 million (human) laborers in mainland China, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants. As labor regulations tighten up in China, human laborers demanding wage rises become replaceabl e." - Full Article Source ITEM #297 08/01/11 - Hackers Could Open Convicts' Cells In Prisons "Some of the same vulnerabilities that the Stuxnet superworm used to sabotage centrifuges at a nuclear plant in Iran exist in the country's top high-security prisons where programmable logic controllers (PLCs) control locks on cells and other facility doo rs. Researchers have already written three exploits for PLC vulnerabilities they found. 'Most people don't know how a prison or jail is designed; that's why no one has ever paid attention to it,' says John Strauchs, who plans to discuss the issue and demo nstrate an exploit against the systems at the DefCon hacker conference next week. 'How many people know they're built with the same kind of PLC used in centrifuges?' A hacker would need to get his malware onto the control computer either by getting a corr upt insider to install it via an infected USB stick or send it via a phishing attack aimed at a prison staffer, since some control systems are also connected to the internet, Strauchs claims. 'Bear in mind, a prison security electronic system has many par ts beyond door control such as intercoms, lighting control, video surveillance, water and shower control, and so forth,' adds Strauchs. 'Once we take control of the PLC we can do anything (PDF). Not just open and close doors. We can absolutely destroy the system. We could blow out all the electronics.'" - Full Article Source ITEM #298 08/01/11 - Radio Energy Harvested With Inkjet-Printed Antenna "Everlasting green energy for RF tags and other low-power devices could be possible as scientists have harvested energy from ambient radio waves using cheap antennas printed by an ordinary inkjet. The scientists, from Georgia Tech, started at 100MHz but h ave now produced systems which scavenge power at up to 60GHz, allowing them to draw power from most of today's major radio technologies." - Full Article Source ITEM #299 08/01/11 - DVD - the Physics of Crystals, Pyramids and Tetrahedrons This is a wonderful duel DVD set lasting 2 hours and which presents one man's lifelong study of pyramids, crystals and their effects. Several of his ori ginal and very creative experiments are explained and diagramed out for experimenters. These experiments include; 1) transmutation of zinc to lower elements using a tetrahedron, 2) energy extraction from a pyramid, 3) determining mathematic ratios of nature in a simple experiment, 4) accelerating the growth of food, 5) increasing the abundance of food, 6) how crystals amplify, focus and defocus energy, 7) using crystals to assist natural healing, 8) how the universe uses spirals and vortexes to produce free energy and MORE... - Two DVDs - More Info and check out this Youtube Clip ITEM #300 08/01/11 - KeelyNet BBS Files w/bonus PDF of 'Keely and his Discoveries' Finally, I've gotten around to compiling all the files (almost 1,000 - about 20MB and lots of work doing it) from the original KeelyNet BBS into a form you can easily navigate and read using your browser, ideally Firefox but it does work with IE. Most of these files are extremely targeted, interesting and informative, I had forgotten just how much but now you can have the complete organized, categorized set, not just sprinklings from around the web. They will keep you reading for weeks if not longer and g ive you clues and insights into many subjects and new ideas for investigation and research. IN ADDITION, I am including as a bonus gift, the book (in PDF form) that started it all for me, 'Keely and his Discoveries - Aerial Navigation' which includes the analysis of Keely's discoveries by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton. This 407 page eBook alone is worth the price of the KeelyNet BBS CD but it will give you some degree of understanding about what all Keely accomplished which is just now being rediscovered, but of course, without recognizing Keely as the original discoverer. Chapters include; Vibratory Sympathetic and Polar Flows, Vibratory Physics, Latent Force in Interstitial Spaces and much more. To give some idea of how Keely's discoveries are being slowly redi scovered in modern times, check out this Keely History. These two excellent bodies of information will be sent to you on CD. If alternative science intrigues and fascinates you , this CD is what you've been looking for... - More Info ITEM #301 08/01/11 - 'The Evolution of Matter' and 'The Evolution of Forces' on CD Years ago, I had been told by several people, that the US government frequently removes books they deem dangerous or 'sensitive' from libraries. Some are replaced with sections removed or rewritten so as to 'contain' information that should not be availab le to the public despite the authors intent. A key example was during the Manhattan Project when the US was trying to finalize research into atomic bombs. They removed any books that dealt with the subject and two of them were by Dr. Gustave Le Bon since they dealt with both energy and matter including radioactivity. I had been looking for these two books for many years and fortunately stumbled across two copies for which I paid about $40.00 each. I couldn't put down the books once I started reading them. Such a wealth of original discoveries, many not known or remembered today. / Page 88 - Without the ether there could be neither gravity, nor light, nor electricity, nor heat, nor anything, in a word, of which we have knowledge. The universe would be sile nt and dead, or would reveal itself in a form which we cannot even foresee. If one could construct a glass chamber from which the ether were to be entirely eliminated, heat and light could not pass through it. It would be absolutely dark, and probably gra vitation would no longer act on the bodies within it. They would then have lost their weight. / Page 96-97 - A material vortex may be formed by any fluid, liquid or gaseous, turning round an axis, and by the fact of its rotation it describes spirals. The study of these vortices has been the object of important researches by different scholars, notably by Bjerkness and Weyher. They have shown that by them can be produced all the attractions and repulsions recognized in electricity, the deviations of the ma gnetic needle by currents, etc. These vortices are produced by the rapid rotation of a central rod furnished with pallets, or, more simply, of a sphere. Round this sphere gaseous currents are established, dissymetrical with regard to its equatorial plane, and the result is the attraction or repulsion of bodies brought near to it, according to the position given to them. It is even possible, as Weyher has proved, to compel these bodies to turn round the sphere as do the satellites of a planet without touch ing it. / Page 149 - "The problem of sending a pencil of parallel Hertzian waves to a distance possesses more than a theoretical interest. It is allowable to say that its solution would change the course of our civilization by rendering war impossible. Th e first physicist who realizes this discovery will be able to avail himself of the presence of an enemy's ironclads gathered together in a harbour to blow them up in a few minutes, from a distance of several kilometres, simply by directing on them a sheaf of electric radiations. On reaching the metal wires with which these vessels are nowadays honeycombed, this will excite an atmosphere of sparks which will at once explode the shells and torpedoes stored in their holds. With the same reflector, giving a p encil of parallel radiations, it would not be much more difficult to cause the explosion of the stores of powder and shells contained in a fortress, or in the artillery sparks of an army corps, and finally the metal cartridges of the soldiers. Science, wh ich at first rendered wars so deadly, would then at length have rendered them impossible, and the relations between nations would have to be established on new bases." - More Info ITEM #302 08/01/11 - High Voltage & Free Energy Devices Handbook This wonderfully informative ebook provides many simple experiments you can do, including hydrogen generation and electrostatic repulsion as well as the keys to EV Gray's Fuelless Engine. One of the most comprehensive compilations of information yet detai ling the effects of high voltage repulsion as a driving force. Ed Gray's engine produced in excess of 300HP and he claimed to be able to 'split the positive' energy of electricity to produce a self-running motor/generator for use as an engine. Schematics and tons of photos of the original machines and more! Excellent gift for your technical friends or for that budding scientist! If you are an experimenter or know someone who investigates such matters, this would make an excellent addition to your library or as an unforgettable gift. The downloadable HVFE eBook pdf file is almost 11MB in size and contains many experiments, photos, diagrams and technical details. Buy a copy and learn all about hydrogen generation, its uses and how to produce electrostatic r epulsion. - 121 pages - More Info ITEM #303 08/01/11 - Hypnosis CD - 3 eBooks with How To Techniques and Many Cases If you have a few minutes, you might want to read my page on hypnosis and all the amazing things associated with its application. Included is an experience I had when I hypnotized a neighbor kid when I was about 14. As well the hypnotic gaze of snakes, th e discovery of 'eyebeams' which can be detected electronically, the Italian Hypnotist Robber who was caught on tape with his eyes glowing as cashiers handed over their money and remembered nothing, glamour and clouding the mind of others, several methods of trance induction and many odd cases, animal catatonia, healing, psychic phenomena, party/stage stunts, including my favorite of negative hallucination where you make your subject NOT see something...much more...if nothing else, its might be a hoot to r ead. - More Info ITEM #304 08/01/11 - 14 Ways to Save Money on Fuel Costs This eBook is the result of years of research into various methods to increase mileage, reduce pollution and most importantly, reduce overall fuel costs. I t starts out with the simplest methods and offers progressively more detailed technologies that have been shown to reduce fuel costs. As a bonus to readers, I have salted the pages with free interesting BONUS items that correlate to the relevant page. Jus t filling up with one tank of gas using this or other methods explained here will pay for this eBook. Of course, many more methods are out there but I provided only the ones which I think are practical and can be studied by the average person who is looki ng for a way to immediately reduce their fuel costs. I am currently using two of the easier methods in my own vehicle which normally gets 18-22 mpg and now gets between 28 and 32 mpg depending on driving conditions. A tank of gas for my 1996 Ford Ranger c osts about $45.00 here so I am saving around $15-$20 PER TANK, without hurting my engine and with 'greener' emissions due to a cleaner burn! The techniques provided in this ebook begin with simple things you can do NOW to improve your mileage and lower yo ur gas costs. - eBook Download / More Info ITEM #305 08/01/11 - The Physics of the Primary State of Matter The Physics of the Primary State of Matter - published in the 1930s, Karl Schappeller described his Prime Mover, a 10-inch steel sphere with quarter-inch copper tubing coils. These were filled with a material not named specifically, but which is s aid to have hardened under the influence of direct current and a magnetic field [electro-rheological fluid]. With such polarization, it might be guessed to act like a dielectric capacitor and as a diode... - More Info ITEM #306 08/01/11 - $5 Alt Science MP3s to listen while working/driving/jogging