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February 2008 Plenum News 2008 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2007 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2006 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2005 (enhanced) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Entire Year (minimal, early formats) 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 You can write Comments or read the KeelyNet discussion list. Feel free to subscribe. Be aware in case any of these links don't respond, most will be available through the Wayback Machine, simply cut and paste the link to recall the 'lost' information. 02/29/08 - Solar without the Panels Utilities are using the sun's heat to boil water for steam turbines. Investors and utilities intent on building solar power plants are increasingly turning to solar thermal power, a comparatively low-tech alternative to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity. This month, in the latest in a string of recent deals, Spanish solar-plant developer Abengoa Solar and Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service announced a 280-megawatt solar thermal project in Arizona. By contrast, the world's largest installations of photovoltaics generate only 20 megawatts of power. In a solar thermal plant, mirrors concentrate sunlight onto some type of fluid that is used, in turn, to boil water for a steam turbine. The capacity to store energy is critical to the economics of the solar thermal plant. Without storage, a solar thermal plant would need a turbine large enough to handle peak steam production, when the sun is brightest, but which would otherwise be underutilized. Stored heat means that a plant can use a smaller, cheaper steam turbine that can be kept running steadily for more hours of the day. While adding storage would substantially increase the cost of the energy produced by a photovoltaic array or wind farm, it actually reduces the cost per kilowatt of the energy produced by solar thermal plants. - Source 02/29/08 - Ethanol carries a little-recognized risk The nation's drive to use more alternative fuel carries a danger many communities have been slow to recognize: Ethanol fires are harder to put out than gasoline ones and require a special type of firefighting foam. Many fire departments around the country don't have the foam, don't have enough of it, or are not well-trained in how to apply it, firefighting experts say. It is also more expensive than conventional foam. The problem is that water doesn't put out ethanol fires, and the foam that has been used since the 1960s to smother ordinary gasoline blazes doesn't work well against the grain-alcohol fuel. Wrecks involving ordinary cars and trucks are not the major concern. They carry modest amounts of fuel, and it is typically a low-concentration, 10 percent blend of ethanol and gasoline. A large amount of conventional foam can usually extinguish such fires. Instead, the real danger involves the many tanker trucks and railcars that are rolling out of the Corn Belt with huge quantities of 85 or 95 percent ethanol and carrying it to parts of the country unaccustomed to dealing with it. Water is not used against gasoline fires, because it can spread the blaze and cause the flames to run down into drains and sewers. Instead, foam is used to form a blanket on top of the burning gasoline and snuff out of the flames. But ethanol - a type of grain alcohol often distilled from corn - eats through that foam and continues to burn. Such fires require a special alcohol-resistant foam that relies on long-chain molecules known as polymers to smother the flames. Industry officials say the special foam costs about 30 percent more than the standard product, at around $90 to $115 for a five-gallon container. Fighting ethanol fires also requires a change in tactics. Brent Gaspard, marketing director for Williams Fire & Hazard Control Inc., an industrial firefighting company in Texas, said firefighters cannot just charge ahead and attack an ethanol fire with foam. "If you just plunge the foam into the fuel, it's going to be less effective. You have to let the foam gently run across the surface so you create a shield," he said. - Source 02/29/08 - Will the Egg Grow Up to Be a Hen or a Rooster? (Mar, 1922) The “sexometer” consists of a piece of cork wound with copper wire from which is suspended a pendulum of wire ending in a flat piece of aluminum-plated substance. In examining the egg, the cork is held in one hand and the egg in the other. If the egg is male, the pendulum, it is claimed, will swing in a circle. If it is female, the pendulum is said to swing back and forth. It has been demonstrated that the device, when held over one egg, will swing in a circle; yet when it is held over another, it will swing back and forth. Whether these varying motions are due to the sex of the egg, or to such incidental qualities as shape and size, is a puzzle that no one has been able to answer. The inventor claims that in experiments covering a period of six months, the instrument forecasts on 85 per cent of the eggs tested were correct. / (Surely there must be some electronically detectable signal for this? - JWD) - Source 02/29/08 - 48% of Teenagers Bought No CDs in 2007 48% of teenagers bought no CDs at all in 2007, up from 38% in 2006. Music downloads continue to grow, though, with iTunes leading the way. The illegal sharing of music online continued to soar in 2007, but there was one sign of hope that legal downloading was picking up steam. In the last year, Apple Inc.’s iTunes store, which sells only digital downloads, jumped ahead of Best Buy Co. to become the No. 2 U.S. music seller, trailing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. - Source 02/29/08 - Nanoparticles to Make Hydrogen Cheaper than Gasoline QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for 2010 by 10%. The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving. - Source 02/29/08 - Three trillion dollars - Economist tabulates true cost of Iraq war Some time in 2005, Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, who also served as an economic adviser under Clinton, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion. Even that, Stiglitz says now, was deliberately conservative: "We didn't want to sound outlandish." So what did the Republicans say? "They had two reactions," Stiglitz says wearily. "One was Bush saying, 'We don't go to war on the calculations of green eye-shaded accountants or economists.' And our response was, 'No, you don't decide to fight a response to Pearl Harbour on the basis of that, but when there's a war of choice, you at least use it to make sure your timing is right, that you've done the preparation. And you really ought to do the calculations to see if there are alternative ways that are more effective at getting your objectives. The second criticism - which we admit - was that we only look at the costs, not the benefits. Now, we couldn't see any benefits. From our point of view we weren't sure what those were." - Source 02/29/08 - Turn PDFs into Printable Booklets with BookletCreator Want to read a printed copy of a PDF that's portable and staple-free? BookletCreator is a free PDF conversion webapp that creates documents that can be printed and folded into an easy-to-read booklet. Assuming your PDF is oriented to "portrait" layout and is less than eight pages, you can get what appear to be pretty decent-looking booklets from your document. Got more than eight pages? Tell BookletCreator to split the file into so many pages per booklet, and spread your words and images across multiple copies. BookletCreator is free to use and doesn't require a sign-up. - Source 02/29/08 - Geneticist creating critter that turns CO2 to fuel A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page. The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter. The limiting part of the equation isn't designing an organism, it's the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page. "We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock." - Source 02/29/08 - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down. Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it. Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70. Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news. - Source 02/29/08 - Bio-Foolish Behavior In 2005, America used 15% of its corn crop to replace just 2% of its gasoline. Two new studies say use of biofuels will leave the world a warmer and hungrier place. According to University of Minnesota ecologist and study co-author David Tilman, converting the grasslands of the U.S. to corn for ethanol releases excess CO2 emissions of 134 metric tons per hectare (equal to 2.47 acres). The reason is that plants, from grasses to trees, store carbon dioxide in their roots, shoots and leaves. "I know that when I look at a tree that half the dry weight is carbon," says Tilman. "That's going to end up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when you cut it down." "Any biofuel that causes land clearing is likely to increase global warming," says Nature Conservancy ecologist Joseph Fargione, the lead author of a second study also published in Science. According to Searchinger, "Corn-based ethanol, instead of producing 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years." So it's not surprising that 10 prominent scientists have written a letter to President Bush and other government leaders urging them to "shape policies to assure that government incentives for biofuels do not increase global warming." - Source 02/29/08 - Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream." Now there's the Air Force's argument, that blogs aren't legitimate media outlets -- and therefore, shouldn't be read at work. But this view isn't universally held in the military. Many believe blogs to be a valuable source of information -- and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, at home and abroad. / From The Raw Feed - Young Americans join the military to fight for, among other rights, freedom of speech. But the U.S. Air Force is now denying those very rights to Air Force troops. 1. Young people who serve in the military already sacrifice their relationships and social lives, leisure and income. Now they're being needlessly denied the small pleasure of surfing the Internet without censorship. 2. We trust Air Force personnel with nuclear weapons and heavy bombers, but we can't trust them with blogs? 3. Exactly what is the Air Force brass afraid of? Are they afraid that military personnel will be exposed to bad language? Sex? What, exactly? 4. How does it affect morale for troops to know their military superiors are deciding what they can and cannot read? 5. Are recruiters telling young people thinking about joining the Air Force that they're signing up for censorship? - Source 02/29/08 - Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005. McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England. The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone. The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw. McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth. "Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things," McNichol said. - Source 02/29/08 - 0-300mph in just 30 seconds This is the world’s fastest-ever road vehicle, taking just 30 seconds to reach 300mph before hitting a maximum 340. The Acabion GTBO, described by its creator as a “road streamliner,” is neither car nor motor-bike, but something in between. The super-light two-seater dream machine uses jet fighter and Formula 1 technology, with a turbo-charged 1300cc engine pushing out a whacking 800 horsepower. But ironically it has two stabilisers at the back, just like those fitted to toddlers’ bikes, to keep it steady at low speeds. Dr Maskus aims to have it on the road in the UK and USA within three years. But start saving now - it will set you back a whopping £1.5million. Fastest current road car is America’s SSC Ultimate Aero TT, which does a mere 257mph. - Source 02/29/08 - Scientists advance 'drought crop' Researchers in Finland and the United States say they have discovered a gene that controls the amount of carbon dioxide a plant absorbs. It also controls the amount of water vapour it releases into the atmosphere. This information could be important for food production and in regulating climate change. Plants play a crucial role in the regulation of the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. They absorb the gas through tiny pores on their leaves called stomata and these pores also release water vapour as the plant grows. In extremely dry weather, a plant can lose 95% of its water in this way. Now teams in Finland and California are reporting in the journal Nature that they have found a crucial genetic pathway that controls the opening and closing of these pores. The researchers say that this understanding could allow them to modify plants so that they continue to absorb carbon dioxide but reduce the amount of water released into the atmosphere, enabling them to thrive in very dry conditions. - Source 02/27/08 - USPTO to Hold Live Online Chat for Independent Inventors Senior officials of the United State Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will be available live online February 28, 2008 to answer questions and offer tips for independent inventors, a press release by the USPTO stated. Instructions for taking part in the online chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO website. Inventors can begin logging on for the chat. The independent inventor online chat is part of the USPTO's continuing efforts to promote and protect America's independent inventors. This effort includes educating inventor-entrepreneurs about the risks of working with invention development companies. / Instructions for taking part in the on-line chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO web site at 10 AM (EST) this Thursday (02/28/08). Inventors can begin logging on for the chat at 1:30 PM. The independent inventor on-line chat is part of the USPTO's continuing efforts to promote and protect America's independent inventors. This effort includes educating inventor-entrepreneurs about the risks of working with invention development companies. We have transcripts (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/onlineiip.htm) and frequently-asked questions ( http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/transcripts.htm) from previous onlines available on the Inventors Resource pages. Check them out, your questions may have already been answered for you. - Source 02/27/08 - $21 million for Cool Earth’s Solar Balloons What has inflatable lightweight mirrors and captures the same amount of energy from the sun, as traditional flat panel PV systems, while using 500 times less solar cell material? Cool Earth's cool Solar Balloons do and they're about to expand. Since these Solar Balloons require less material to capture energy they are lightweight as well as cost efficient. Each balloons is 2 meter wide and is stable enough to withstand 125 mile an hour winds. In addition since the bubbles are lightweight they can easily be suspended on support cables above ground and are kept perpendicular to the sun's light. "Instead of rigid aluminum or glass structure to focus light, we use metalized plastic films and instead of ribs, trusswork, or material heft to maintain the mirror shape, we use active inflation air," Cool Earth website. The transparent bubble design forms a protective barrier around the reflective receiver and protects it from such things as rain, dirt, and bugs. The energy is concentrated and then focused onto photovoltaic cells thus increasing the energy impacting the cells in greater volumes. By controlling the inflation of the balloon the balloon's optical properties are optimized. Earlier this month (Feb. 14, 2008) Cool Earth's developer and owner announced an initial closing of $21 million in its Series A financing. - Source 02/27/08 - Cure Hiccups with a Zap! Back in 2003, Philip Ehlinger, Jr., in the style of a pre-Discovery Channel MythBuster, or an obstinate inventor, you decide, felt this urban legend was worth validating, so he came up with United States patent 7062320. Basically, the device is a cylinder resembling a drinking glass that is strapped to the hiccup sufferer's face and is designed to shock them every time they drink from it! Supposedly, the shocks stimulate the nerves that control the hiccups. Whether or not this actually cures the hiccuper is anyone's guess. The more interesting question is how does an otherwise perfectly sane and self-loving individual come to a point that electro-shock therapy for treating a case of annoying hiccups does not seem like overkill but a good idea? - Source 02/27/08 - Beating the heat with a home-made AC M. B. Lal has come up with a simple non-patented invention that aims at helping people keep cool during the sizzling hot summers - and all at a fraction of the cost required to run conventional air-conditioners and air-coolers. All that is needed for the functioning of the ice-based “Snowbreeze” is a 23-Watt fan that consumes less energy than the regular light bulb. How to make - A movable device, “Snowbreeze” can be assembled from scratch at home with the following easily available components -- a container bucket, a few strips of plywood, an ice drum, a roll of aluminium foil and, obviously, loads of ice. At the heart of the machine resides a powerful 23-Watt fan that propels cool air while wheels at the base ensure that the device can be moved around without too much trouble.This is what the veteran Mr. Lal, the brain behind “Snowbreeze”, has to say: “Power shortages, outages and the resulting pollution are being widely discussed these days. This new invention has the potential of cutting down energy consumption by air-conditioning and room heating by at least half. It also ensures uninterrupted service during power breakdowns, no pollution and pre-humidified hot air during the winters.” “It can be rigged up by two carpenters within two days and I have not patented it so others are free to modify it further as per their requirement,” he adds. Multipurpose - Not a device to hibernate during the winters, “Snowbreeze” can also double up as a room heater with the minor addition of a 500-Watt quartz halogen bulb that is suspended in the upper part of the aluminium drum. A point to note is that “Snowbreeze” is not just an air-cooler but an air-conditioner that de-humidifies air like any conventional air-conditioner. The overall cost of operating it may not be significantly more than the running costs of a desert cooler. To make things simpler, Mr. Lal has come out with a do-it-yourself book on the subject. - Source 02/27/08 - Underground Farming in Japan There’s something unusual going on inside a former bank vault hidden beneath a high rise building in Tokyo, Japan: farming! And no, not the illicit kind: While we’re on the subject of things agricultural and of things covered by just about everyone long before today, there is Pasona O2, a subterranean farm cultivated inside a former bank vault beneath a high rise building in one of Tokyo’s business districts. Though walled in from sunlight, weather and geology, it’s unbelievably verdant. Tomatoes, lettuces, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers and herbs, are grown in an area covering almost a square kilometer. There is even a terraced rice paddy. This is all done, by the way, in a very hi-tech fashion. Computers control the temperature and light, which in this case is artificially generated by LEDs, halide lamps and sodium vapor lamps. - Source 02/27/08 - Steam-powered battery charger For the most part we have all the power we could ever need from our small 600 Watt solar array and our 20' diameter wind turbine, but on occasion I do need to run a generator and I always figured that a steam engine would be the most fun, plus... I don't need to rely on petroleum - I have lots of wood all around me! The engine is a 1903 C&BC 6 horsepower steam engine. I bought it at auction nearby (stole it) for less than $150. It's in very good shape, I believe it's been rebuilt and never run since. The boiler we got about a year later. I'm guessing it to be about a 4hp boiler. It was made by 'The Look Out boiler company' in 1940. It seems to be in good condition. - Source 02/27/08 - Teenagers unhappy about security cameras in school lavatories Students at Lipson School in Plymouth UK returned from a one-week break to discover closed-circuit security cameras in the lavatories (They were "the round ones that can move," said one 15-year-old who saw them). After hundreds of students protested, the school agreed to remove the cameras. Principal Steve Baker said contractors fitted them on the orders of another staff member, who did not have the measure approved by him or school governors. Mr Baker added that the system had now been disabled and would be removed as soon as possible. He said: "Someone made an error. They had no authorisation from me or from the governors to install these cameras" - Source 02/27/08 - Plan a Room Redesign in 3D with Mydeco Feel like giving a room in your house a new and improved look, but find yourself aimlessly wandering the aisles of your home improvement store, hunting for inspiration? The Mydeco website offers a free tool that lets you visualize almost every aspect of a room-either built in Sims-style 3D or recreated from an uploaded photo-from floors to furniture to wallpaper, down to what you'll put on your coffee table. Once your room is set up, you can view it from any angle, check out other users' rooms and (of course) see purchase recommendations. For a free online tool that requires no CAD-like skills, Mydeco is a pretty helpful style solution. (via lifehacker.com) - Source 02/27/08 - Shoppers warned bigger bills on way Tom Knutzen, chief executive of Danisco, one of the world’s largest ingredients companies, said rising vegetable oil costs made it more expensive to produce preservatives, colourings and flavourings. “Our products are based on vegetable oil. “Our input cost has gone up so we are increasing prices,” he said in an interview in Brussels. He added that preservatives, colourings and flavourings made up only 1-2 per cent of the cost of food but there would be a ripple effect as they were present in almost all the food sold worldwide. US agriculture officials forecast that food inflation will rise this year at an annual rate of 3-4 per cent, warning that the risks were skewed to the upside. Last year, food inflation rose 4 per cent, the highest annual rate since 1990. Companies until now have moderated consumer price increases thanks to large inventories and financial hedges in the commodities market futures. But during the course of this year those mitigating factors would vanish, executives said. “The final result will be higher prices,” Mr Lapp said. The global economy is “at the beginning of a period in which consumer will face higher food prices”. - Source 02/27/08 - Flamethrowers Possibly one of the most terrifying and demoralising infantry weapons ever produced is the portable flamethrower. As the introduction to the 1944 Australian Army training pamphlet for flamethrowers states: " ... flame has a powerful psychological effect in that humans instinctively withdraw from it, even when their morale is good. In addition, it is a casualty producing and lethal agent." Although first used by the German Army during WW1, the Australian Army's experience with flamethrowers really began during WW 2 when a need for this type of weapon was identified. Experience showed that a stubborn enemy, when well dug into extensive bunker systems, was extremely difficult and costly to dislodge using the more conventional small arms and grenades. - Source 02/27/08 - RedTacton Device Turns Your Body Into Swipe Card Japanese telecom company NTT is soon to launch a product that transmits data via your body, effectively turning you into a touch-technology swipe card. RedTacton is a card-like gadget that you simply carry anywhere on your person, and it transmits data via electric fields- a world's first according to NTT. The data is passed on to other devices as you touch them, even with your clothes or shoes. So you can open an office door keylessly, unlock and start your car, or any of a million other applications currently using swipe-card entry. It's clearly more convenient than having to fish out a conventional card, and more secure than a wireless device whose signal could be snooped on. NTT even foresees medical applications in the future, since the system could easily and discretely transmit health-sensor data to doctors and nurses as they touch you during exams. No prices are announced yet, but it will be "a bit pricier" than existing systems. - Source 02/27/08 - Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average." Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats." He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased. It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too. - Source 02/27/08 - 3rd Manmade Grand Canyon Flood Planned For the third time since 1996, officials plan to unleash a manmade flood in the Grand Canyon next month in an effort to restore an ecosystem that was altered by a dam constructed on the Colorado River decades ago. The Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963 upstream from the Grand Canyon, permanently changed the Colorado River, transforming it from a warm, muddy, unpredictable force of nature into a cooler, clearer, tightly controlled water-delivery system. In 1996, the government staged the first artificial flood in the canyon, opening Glen Canyon Dam's bypass tubes for several days in an attempt to replicate natural cycles. A second test in 2004 taught scientists the importance of sand and sediment. The dam traps almost all the sediment that once flowed down the river, which is why beaches and habitats have eroded. A good monsoon season can wash significant quantities of sand down the Paria and Little Colorado rivers, which empty into the big Colorado below the dam. If approved by the U.S. Department of the Interior, next month's flood will scour and reshape miles of sandy banks on the floor of the Grand Canyon. The department's decision is expected this week. If approved, flows in the Grand Canyon would increase to 41,000 cubic feet per second for nearly three days four to five times the normal amount of water released from the Glen Canyon Dam. What scientists and environmentalists want to see is what will happen to the fish and the canyon when the gates close at dam and the staged flood recedes. - Source 02/25/08 - Flying 'paddleboat' may finally take off A cyclogyro flies using "cycloidal propellers" - several wings positioned around the edge of a rotating cylindrical framework, a bit like a paddle-wheel. As each wing rotates, its blades move through the air generating lift and thrust. And, since each wing rotates through a full circle, altering the angle of the individual blades can pull the aircraft forwards, backwards and down as well up. The manoeuvrability that cycloidal propellers could offer provides benefits over more established flying methods. Although no cyclogyro has yet flown without being tethered, its proponents say the design could prove more efficient and manoeuvrable than helicopters at small scales. A team of Singapore researchers is leading the race to construct a working cyclogyro with a prototype that hovers on the end of a line. After studying the performance of different cycloidal designs, the pair modified a toy helicopter, giving it two cycloidal propellers with three blades each, and a small tail rotor for stability. "On the tether, the aircraft can spin, move directly up and down or fly forward and backward," says Hu. "This is perhaps the first recorded flight for a cyclogyro," he adds. "There were some people claiming successful flights, but no video or proof for that." "Cyclogyros are more relevant now because people want to build small, agile UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles]," says Weihs. At such sizes they have greater advantages over helicopters, he says. The parts of a helicopter blade nearest and furthest from the hub are moving too slowly and too fast, respectively, to generate thrust. "With a cyclogyro every bit moves at the same speed, so there is no 'dead space'," says Weihs. Cyclogyros can also be more manoeuvrable, says Weihs. Helicopters must tilt to travel laterally. But cycloidal propellers can generate thrust in any direction so the craft can remain level, or adopt any other position and still fly in any direction. These advantages are greatest at small sizes. "They are probably not practical above half a metre across," says Weihs. "You won't see one carry a passenger." - Source 02/25/08 - Five Great Auditory Illusions Daniel Levitin has written The Music Illusion, which looks at auditory illusions and how they can help us understand the workings of the human brain. Here we have compiled five of the most striking auditory illusions discovered so far. We had a big pool to choose from, from the mysterious quintina (fifth voice) heard in some types of throat-singing, to the saxophone solo that isn't on Lady Madonna (it's actually the Beatles singing into their cupped hands) and the soaring guitar sound of Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour. Listen to our top 5 below, and read our explanations of the effects involved...(refer Source page for samples) - Source 02/25/08 - Alternative Without Geo-engineering An invention that is driven by concentrated solar energy. It utilizes a thermally powered photonic crystal to produce precisely unique terahertz frequencies of sufficient power to dissociate CO2 molecules in atmospheric gases to the exclusion of surrounding molecules of matter in air. The invention works on these principles. It is known that specific molecules absorb energy at unique frequencies. It is also known that bodies of matter resonating at the same frequency transfer energy to the exclusion of surrounding matter. Therefore, CO2 molecules in the atmosphere will absorb energy from a specifically tuned and sufficiently powered field of radiation, as they pass through it, to the exclusion of other molecules comprising air. The energy absorbed excites and dissociates covalent bonds resulting in new molecular fragments. The invention can be designed to produce two species of by-product from dissociated CO2 molecules. First, carbon (carbon black) and oxygen second, carbon monoxide and oxygen. In the first case, carbon is condensed for sequestration as a solid. In the second case, carbon monoxide is reacted with metals to produce a metal carbonyl that can be further refined into an alternative fuel. Interestingly this alternative fuel is harvested by the invention from a new untapped and decentralized source--the earth’s atmosphere. When the fuel is combusted it will be carbon neutral to the environment producing a new closed loop alternative fuel cycle driven by solar energy. Livingry.us LLC will shortly offer equity units to move this technology through a proof of concept and anticipates beginning to license the technology before the end of year. - Source 02/25/08 - Another Step Towards Artificial Intelligence Fellows of experimental physics department of Ural University of Physics and technology have developed necessary hardware components for “electromagnetic consciousness” according CEMI (consciousness electromagnetic information field) theory of Johnjoe McFadden. Russian think tank created a model of neural network on neurons (EM (electromagnetic) neurons) with additional channels for information exchange via electromagnetic field and patented it (patent No. 2309457 “Neural field model”). Channels for interaction via electromagnetic field are implemented in an original construction of neural axon, looking like a chain of in-series radio-frequency pulse self oscillators with self-quenching circuits and radio-pulse envelope separators. The concept of EM neurons is almost the same like McFadden’s CEMI theory, but with following exception: mechanism of information exchange process between neurons via EM field is different. EM neurons have much in common with its biological prototype and correspond with usual processes of neurophysiology. However, the issue of spontaneous generation of consciousness in networks with this type of architecture remains open. - Source 02/25/08 - New Development for Correct Diagnosis Scientists from Russian city of Novosibirsk have developed a unique device - a microchip appliance, able to identify any existing viral and biological infection. The device identifies tuberculosis, AIDS, hepatitis and flu viruses and does it very fast - only 15 minutes are required for telling what makes a human being sick. The patient should only give several drops of his blood. Inventors claim their diagnostic device has no analogues in the world. However, it can work in common biochemical laboratories. - Source 02/25/08 - Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way. Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines. Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy. Supporters say Texas is ideal for wind-power development, not just because it is windy. It also has sparsely populated land for wind farms, fast-growing cities and a friendly regulatory environment for developers. The quaint windmills of old have been replaced by turbines that stand as high as 20-story buildings, with blades longer than a football field and each capable of generating electricity for small communities. Powerful turbines are able to capture power even when the wind is relatively weak, and they help to lower the cost per kilowatt hour. - Source 02/25/08 - Aluminum-rich alloy produces hydrogen on-demand for large-scale uses The new alloy contains 95 percent aluminum and 5 percent of an alloy that is made of the metals gallium, indium and tin. Because the new alloy contains significantly less of the more expensive gallium than previous forms of the alloy, hydrogen can be produced less expensively, he said. When immersed in water, the alloy splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which immediately reacts with the aluminum to produce aluminum oxide, also called alumina, which can be recycled back into aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, making the technology more competitive with other forms of energy production, Woodall said. "After recycling both the aluminum oxide back to aluminum and the inert gallium-indium-tin alloy only 60 times, the cost of producing energy both as hydrogen and heat using the technology would be reduced to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with other energy technologies," Woodall said. (via zpenergy.com) - Source 02/25/08 - The 'Perfect Smile' Camera Set this eight-megapixel camera to “Smile Shot,” and the shutter won’t click until someone grins. Face-detection software finds jawlines and watches for the change in contrast-light teeth against a darker mouth-that indicates a smile. Olympus FE-280 $200 - Source 02/25/08 - Cosmic coincidence spotted The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10122. Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number - which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe - keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined1. This ‘coincidence’, he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes. - Source 02/25/08 - 20 Fascinating Facts About the Natural Healing Power of Bananas Here is a story that even a monkey would go ape about. A professor at CCNY for a physiological psych class told his class about bananas. He said the expression 'going bananas' is from the effects of bananas on the brain. When compared to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around. No wonder monkeys are so happy all the time! - Source 02/25/08 - Special coating greatly improves solar cell performance The energy from sunlight falling on only 9 percent of California’s Mojave Desert could power all of the United States’ electricity needs if the energy could be efficiently harvested, according to some estimates. Unfortunately, current-generation solar cell technologies are too expensive and inefficient for wide-scale commercial applications. A team of Northwestern University researchers has developed a new anode coating strategy that significantly enhances the efficiency of solar energy power conversion. A paper about the work, which focuses on “engineering” organic material-electrode interfaces in bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells, is published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). - Source 02/25/08 - Laws of (website traffic) attraction If you have a great web log (blog) or a great web page, it doesn’t really matter if no one sees it, right? So, to bring people on your site you have to learn how to do it. Traffic is the main problem to every webmaster, and not many of them know how to get quality traffic. I will show you how to attract people to your site so they wish to never leave and always come back. All of these steps are free so don’t forget to write them down, bookmark this page or even tell your friend about it. So this is it. These 5 laws of website traffic attraction will help you find visitors and boost your traffic to the limits. When you get it just be sure to keep it, ‘cause you never know when will you find it again. - Source 02/25/08 - Google, X Prize Foundation Attract 10 Teams For Moon Race Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and the X Prize Foundation have announced that 10 teams will compete to put a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon. The Google Lunar X Prize, announced six months ago, offers $30 million worth of prizes for the first teams to create a machine that can travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface and send video and other images and data back to Earth. A team that lands a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, travels across the lunar surface, and transmits images back to Earth before Dec. 31, 2012, will be eligible for a $20 million prize. The second-place team wins $5 million. Bonuses and additional prizes from "preferred partners" will also be disbursed. If it takes until 2013, the grand prize amount drops to $15 million. The contest ends Dec. 31, 2014, unless both organizations decide to extend it. Space Florida is a preferred partner and first preferred launch site for the competition. The 10 teams are Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, Astrobotic, Chandah, Frednet, Lunatrex, Micro-Space, Odyssey Moon, Quantum3 Ventures, Southern California Selene Group, and Team Italia. They include private commercial ventures, researchers, university staff and students, an international team of open source developers, as well as teams from Romania, Italy, and the United States. - Source 02/25/08 - E-mail 'Killer' Duping People Into Paying to Save Their Lives The message, which warns against contacting the police, claims to be a threat by a hired killer. It says the "victim" can stop his or her own murder by wiring a specified amount of money to the sender. Long said people should not respond to the e-mail. He said anyone worried about suspicious e-mails can contact the FBI or forward the e-mails to the state's consumer protection division. The attorney general's office says two other scams have surfaced in e-mail and on lookalike Internal Revenue Service Web sites. One notifies people by e-mail that their tax return will be audited or that they are eligible for a refund. It ask people to click on a link, which then sends them to a site that looks like the IRS Web site, but is not. The second scam also involves lookalike IRS Web sites - which ask for information such as Social Security or bank account numbers. - Source 02/25/08 - Storm over Pentagon climate scenario Global warming is more of a threat than terrorism. A report commissioned by a Pentagon think tank is creating a storm of controversy - not because of any military scenarios but because of what it has to say about climate change. The authors suggest a number of dire consequences in a scenario in which the current period of global warming ends in 2010, followed by a period of abrupt cooling. Some examples: * As temperatures rise during this decade, some regions experience severe storms and flooding. In 2007, surging seas break through levees in the Netherlands, making the Hague “unlivable.” * By 2020, after a decade of cooling, Europe’s climate becomes “more like Siberia’s.” * “Mega-droughts” hit southern China and northern Europe around 2010 and last 10 years. * In the United States, agricultural areas suffer from soil loss due to higher winds and drier climate, but the country survives the economic disruption without catastrophic losses. * Widespread famine in China triggers chaos, and “a cold and hungry China peers jealously” at Russia’s energy resources. In the 2020-2030 period, civil war and border wars break out in China. * “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.” In a “world of warring states,” more countries develop nuclear weapons, including Japan, South Korea, Germany, Iran and Egypt. - Source 02/23/08 - The Hot-Line Solar Collector The Hot-Line module looks just about like a conventional flat-plate collector. What makes Lightfoot's panel highly unconventional is that it [1] contains a specially curved reflector which acts to concentrate incoming sunlight on a wedge-shaped absorption tube, [2] operates with an efficiency far surpassing that of any "normal" flat-plate solar panel, and [3] actually "tracks" the sun through a 50 degree vertical arc - and through 150 degrees in the east/west plane - without moving! Dan Lightfoot came upon the idea for the Hot-Line collector quite by accident a decade ago. It seems Dan had been observing a sheet of aluminum that was resting up against his garage wall and noticed how the sun's reflection from that curved sheet formed a bright spot on an adjoining wall. Moreover, he noticed that the bright spot stayed in roughly the same place throughout the day, despite the sun's constant movement. This got Dan to thinking, and to experimenting. With the aid of a small sheet of aluminum, a few scraps of wood and a handful of bolts and clamps, Lightfoot found (by trial and error) that he could curve the metal in such a way that it would focus light in a line - a line that, furthermore, moved only a small distance in or out from the metal as the jury-rigged reflector was tilted through various angles to the sun. At this point, Dan knew that if he could just bend a long sheet of reflective material to the same curvature, lay a channel along the focal plane of the reflector thus created, and run air or water through that channel, he'd have what no one had developed before: a fixed-position, concentrating solar collector. (Focusing collectors are nothing new, of course, but they all have one drawback: in order to work, the reflector must face squarely into the sun at all times. This usually calls, in turn, for a costly and complex motorized gimbal mounting, to allow tracking of the sun. In contrast, Lightfoot's collector can focus light all day long while remaining stationary. - Source 02/23/08 - Microlon to increase their engine's performance and life This remarkable invention helps reduce friction in all functions of the engine, making it more efficient and causing less overall wear. This promotes a list of benefits, like increased gas mileage, more horsepower and longer engine life. It's important to distinguish this treatment from oil or fuel additives. Microlon engine metal treatment gives more effective friction reduction than any lubricant on the market today, yet it works in conjunction with conventional lube to give optimal performance and protection. The treatment is so effective, it lasts the entire life of an engine and never wears out. In addition to improved gas mileage and horsepower, the more efficient engine will have reduced exhaust emissions, thus protecting the environment. In fact, studies show that engines treated with Microlon have reduced hydrocarbon emissions by 24 percent, carbon monoxide by 43 percent and nitrous oxide by 21 percent. An independent study by Porsche revealed that the treatment increased fuel economy by almost 10 percent. By that measure, the savings that a customer will experience will pay for the product in the first year alone. A motorcycle company reported an 11 percent increase in horsepower in one of their main models. Many other tests results show astonishing improvements in other factors of engine performance, all of which are available on the website. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, only 12 percent of the energy from the gasoline burned in an automobile engine goes to moving the tires; the remaining energy gets wasted in various ways. By far, the largest waste is due to engine friction, constituting 62 percent of the initial energy supply. Much of this friction is due to metal-on-metal contact. By adding Microlon, high quality resins embed themselves into the metal, making the surface contact points very slippery, thus allowing more energy to affect the drive train. - Source 02/23/08 - Local invention may prove boon for booze, bio-fuel industries University of Saskatchewan microbiology Prof. Dennis Bayrock has invented a chemical that could increase by a few percentage points the amount of ethanol and liquor produced in the fermentation process. It may not seem like much, but in a year's worth of production in the two industries, it could mean millions in profit per facility. The chemical, which hasn't been named, can be used during the production process to prevent bacteria from stealing the fermenting yeast's sugars, which is the major contributing ingredient in ethanol production. "What many people don't know is, ethanol plants aren't pharmaceutical grade and sterile," said Bayrock, who often works with the muck-filled fermenters in plants. "They're biological in nature and bacteria is always an issue." Just like the human body gets infections, so can fermenting ethanol, he said. Because the yeast is living, there is still limited knowledge on how it will act during its time in a fermenter. "Consider this product the antibiotic for infections in the process," he said. But it isn't just for when the fermenters have "infections." The new chemical can also be used in smaller doses to prevent bacteria from ever hindering production. "With almost all ethanol plants that are using cereal grains there's always a concern of contamination with bacteria," said Keith Rueve, plant manager at the Pound-Maker ethanol facility in Lanigan. "It basically comes in with the grain and needs to be controlled so that it doesn't rob the ethanol yield from the process." - Source 02/23/08 - Wiretapping Made Easy Silently tapping into a private cellphone conversation is no longer a high-tech trick reserved for spies and the FBI. Thanks to the work of two young cyber-security researchers, cellular snooping may soon be affordable enough for your next-door neighbor. In a presentation Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C., David Hulton and Steve Muller demonstrated a new technique for cracking the encryption used to prevent eavesdropping on global system for mobile communications (GSM) cellular signals, the type of radio frequency coding used by major cellular service providers including AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ), Cingular and T-Mobile. Combined with a radio receiver, the pair say their technique allows an eavesdropper to record a conversation on these networks from miles away and decode it in about half an hour with just $1,000 in computer storage and processing equipment. Decrypting GSM still requires special equipment and is more secure than a typical landline. The GSMA, he noted, has developed and is working on implementing a higher level of encryption; Newer 3G cell carriers are also immune from the attack. Although their exploit doesn't target the competing CDMA cellular technology used by carriers like Verizon (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and Sprint Nextel (nyse: S - news - people ), Muller argues it's not necessarily less secure. GSM was only decrypted first because it's more popular worldwide: Few cellphone subscribers outside North America use CDMA carriers. - Source 02/23/08 - Electric cars face battery of hurdles In the rush to deliver an electric car to the masses, General Motors Corp. is finding that the all-important battery might not be the only major hurdle. The heating and cooling systems, for example, are a challenge because they typically are built to run off a traditional fuel combustion engine. That means new types of air conditioning and heating systems must be built. GM, in a high-stakes race with Toyota Motor Corp. to turn out an affordable, effective battery-powered car, has found that while the lithium-ion batteries themselves are hitting all the marks on early road tests, a host of other issues are beginning to crop up. A typical modern stereo system, for example, drains too much juice from the battery life. At the same time, there still isn't a supplier base to provide parts for the mass production of electric vehicles. The quandaries underscore the complexity of what GM and other automakers are trying to achieve in creating an electric car, a feat that involves far more than simply swapping an engine for a high-powered battery cell. "An automobile with a gasoline engine as the power plant has a lot of energy on board -- so much energy there are things that we never paid attention to," Hall said. "When you're relying on the battery, all these problems stack up and you realize you have to do all these other things to optimize for range." In many cases, he said, the suppliers will be better equipped than the automakers to improve on the efficiency of vehicle components. "This is not so much a matter of invention," he said, "as much as it's an application of technology they wouldn't normally do." - Source 02/23/08 - America's economy risks mother of all meltdowns “I would tell audiences that we were facing not a bubble but a froth - lots of small, local bubbles that never grew to a scale that could threaten the health of the overall economy.” Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence. That used to be Mr Greenspan's view of the US housing bubble. He was wrong, alas. So how bad might this downturn get? To answer this question we should ask a true bear. My favorite one is Nouriel Roubini of New York University's Stern School of Business, founder of RGE monitor. Recently, Professor Roubini’s scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is “a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome”. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: “A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.” - Source 02/23/08 - A Lead on the Ark of the Covenant According to Tudor Parfitt, a real life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe. A wooden box, roughly 4 ft. x 2 ft. x 2.5 ft., perhaps gold-plated and carried on poles inserted into rings, it appears in the Good Book variously as the container for the Ten Commandments (Exodus 25:16: "and thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee"); the very locus of God's earthly presence; and as a divine flamethrower that burns obstacles and also crisps some careless Israelites. It is too holy to be placed on the ground or touched by any but the elect. It circles Jericho behind the trumpets to bring the walls tumbling down. The Bible last places the Ark in Solomon's temple, which Babylonians destroyed in 586 BC. - Source 02/23/08 - Idaho Psychiatrist blames energy drinks for psychosis After an Idaho teen last week complained of demonic possession and threatened to harm herself with a knife, her psychiatrist blamed her actions on energy drinks. “She held a knife to herself and was going to kill herself,” Dr. Craig Denny told Idaho Falls and Pocatello, Idaho -based KIFI ABC affiliate Tuesday. “This all started when she was drinking this new energy drink that’s more powerful than all the others.” That energy drink, as it turned out, wasn’t an energy drink at all. It was an energy shot called Zantrex-3 Insta-Shot, according to one of Denny’s colleagues at the hospital. Denny said the girl was consuming several of the five-hour energy shots each day, and his colleague said the youth was simultaneously consuming Zentrex’s diet pills - which also claim to supply energy. The patient demonstrated symptoms about a week after she started consuming the energy shots, Denny said, and the symptoms subsided within days after she stopped. “There’s no limit to what these kids can buy and drink,” Denny said. “I don’t want to see this happen to any other kids and we as a society can be more responsible with what we market to children.” Denny said he didn’t have animosity toward the companies that make energy drinks and energy shots, but said parents should more closely watch what their kids consume - whether It’s energy drinks, soda or fast food. - Source 02/23/08 - Solar panels a 'loser,' professor says Installing solar panels on homes is an economic "loser" with the costs far outweighing the financial benefit, a respected University of California-Berkeley business professor said Wednesday. The technology, using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, is not economically competitive with fossil fuels and costs more than other renewable fuels, said Severin Borenstein, who also directs the UC Energy Institute. "We are throwing away money by installing the current solar PV technology," he said. Not surprisingly, the solar industry reacted strongly to the report. Neal Lurie with the American Solar Energy Society called the study "a publicity stunt." "Borenstein doesn't give proper credit to the important role that competition and economies of scale play in driving down costs," he said. And Julie Blunden, a vice president with San Jose's SunPower, said Borenstein's analysis was "deeply flawed." "He seems to be disconnected from the empirical data in the market," she said. "He doesn't seem to have much peripheral vision from his ivory tower." - Source 02/23/08 - Scientist Experiments With Healing Doctor's Prayers Dr. Issam Nemeh is the medical doctor who is said to heal spiritually, by praying over those who are ill. Szatowski is a NASA researcher from Virginia who believes Nemeh's healing prayers can be measured remotely, over long distances in a closed metal box used to measure electromagnetic images. "What I think is going on is the electromagnetic signal is creating resonances at a molecular level and time sequence correctly that is causing these physical healings," Szatowski said. "In our three-dimensional world, that is the true physical healing is taking place from the electromagnetic radiation." Under controlled conditions when Nemeh prays in Cleveland for a healing, the energy from that prayer can be registered scientifically, Szatowski said at his office in Virgina. "If you have a closed metal electric box, there is no electromagnetic energy in there unless you put it in there," Szatowski said. "How is it getting in there?" Henry asked? "It's coming from the field, from prayer," Szatowski said. "We are measuring the artifact of prayer, artifact meaning we are detecting and measuring the electromagnetic signature as a result of prayer." Scientists and skeptics put little stock in words, Henry reported. They want to see proof, results of comparative studies and double-blind tests that prayer is science. - Source 02/23/08 - Contactless Cards' Risks Become Real Python hacker and Adam Laurie took the stand at the Black Hat DC 2008 conference to demonstrate major security failings in the radio frequency identification tags used in modern credit cards and passports. Asking for a volunteer from the audience who had a smart-card on or about his person, hacker Laurie waved his magic RFID reader at the suddenly famous attendee and suceeded in popping their name along with the account number and expiration date for their RFID-enabled American Express credit card up on the big screen - without ever touching the man in question or even removing the card from his wallet. As if it weren’t already hard to keep up with the latest trends of identity theft and fraud, now there’s another one. RFID, or radio frequency identification tags, are growing in popularity globally, with uses as diverse as in credit cards, animal tagging and even U.K. passports. These tiny chips rely on radio fields of a specific frequency to broadcast stored information that save holders time. - Source 02/23/08 - The search for the nebulous Nazi gold German treasure hunters plan to snake a camera into an underground cavern next week to get a look at what they claim is plunder secreted by the Nazis in the mountainous region by the Czech border in the final weeks of World War Two. Christian Hanisch was led to the spot on the fringes of the tiny village of Deutschkatharinenberg, about 100m from the Czech Republic, by a set of co-ordinates he found in a notebook belonging to his father, a former Luftwaffe radio operator who died last year. Haustein said earlier this week that he was convinced they had found the Soviet Union's storied Amber Room treasure - something he has been seeking for 12 years - but acknowledged Friday that while there could be "cultural treasures" in the cavern, like paintings or amber panelling, they aren't things that show up with a metal detector. The claim to have discovered the Amber Room treasures, first reported by German media this week, has been met with scepticism by experts, who point out that stories of the Amber Room surface regularly, only to be proved wrong. But Haustein defended his theory, saying that even if the find turns out not to be the Amber Room treasure, he is on the right track. / The elaborately carved chamber, made of nearly 1,000 pounds of amber, was a 1716 Prussian gift to St. Petersburg’s founder, Czar Peter the Great. Looted by the Nazis in 1941 from a former imperial palace, the Amber Room epitomized Russia’s losses in the war and inspired a series of treasure hunts. - Source 02/23/08 - The Myth of the Million Dollar Challenge Ater ten years, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) says nobody has even got past their preliminary testing. Furthermore, none of the 'big fish' - medium John Edward, spoon-bender Uri Geller, psychic Sylvia Browne - have applied. And now, perhaps as a result of that fact, James Randi has announced that the Challenge will come to an end in two years, on March 6th, 2010. The JREF need to protect a very large amount of money from possible "long-range shots", and as such they ask for extremely significant results before paying out - much higher than are generally accepted in scientific research (and if you don’t agree to terms, your application is rejected). In the case of parapsychological research, however, where effect size is often small (though apparently robust), this means most researchers would have to go to extraordinary lengths to win the million dollars. Furthermore, applicants must first pass a 'preliminary test', before they are allowed to progress to the actual 'formal' test which pays the million dollars. So an applicant must first show positive results in a preliminary test (yielding results against chance of at least 1000 to 1, apparently), then once through to the next stage they would then have to show positive results against much higher odds to claim the prize (by all reports, at odds of around 1 million to 1). Failure in either test means no cash prize, and a fail beside their name. It many respects it would be like telling a professional golfer to shoot 63 around Augusta National, then come back and shoot 59, to prove that he can play golf. In the words of Chris Carter, author of Parapsychology and the Skeptics: If Randi were genuinely interested in testing unusual claims, then he would also not insist upon odds of at least one million to one against chance for the results. Anyone familiar with scientific studies will be aware that experimental results against chance of say, 800,000 to one would be considered extraordinary; but results this high would be, according to Randi, a “failure.” Dr Michael Sudduth of San Francisco State University also pointed out to me a wonderful irony in one of the rules. Challenge rule #3 states: "We have no interest in theories nor explanations of how the claimed powers might work." As Sudduth puts it: “Curiously, Randi's challenge itself is saddled with assumptions of this very kind. The challenge makes little sense unless we assume that psi is the sort of thing that, if genuine, can be produced on demand, or at least is likely to manifest itself in some perspicuous manner under the conditions specified by the challenge.” - Source 02/23/08 - Arizona to become 'Persian Gulf' of solar energy A Spanish company is planning to take 3 square miles of desert southwest of Phoenix and turn them into one of the largest solar power plants in the world. Abengoa Solar, which has plants in Spain, northern Africa and other parts of the U.S., could begin construction as early as next year on the 280-megawatt plant in Gila Bend -- a small, dusty town 50 miles southeast of Phoenix. The company said Thursday it could be producing solar energy by 2011. Solana will be enough to supply up to 70,000 homes at full capacity. Unlike most solar energy, Solana will use the sun's heat, not its light, to produce power. Gila Bend can get as hot as 120 degrees in the summer. Abengoa CEO Santiago Seage said the plant will use thousands of giant mirrors to harness the sun's heat. That will heat up liquids, which will spin turbines -- just like coal or other power plants but without the pollution. He said using heat will allow the plant to produce power even after the sun has gone down. "We receive the heat from the sun, and we use a fluid that becomes very hot. And we can keep it hot for a long time and release that heat for a long time," he said. "It's like coffee. You can make it hot, keep it hot for a few hours and drink it anytime you want." - Source 02/21/08 - Costs of Solar Photovoltaic Panels Substantially Eclipse Benefits Despite increasing popular support for solar photovoltaic panels in the United States, their costs far outweigh the benefits, according to a new analysis by Severin Borenstein, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business and director of the UC Energy Institute. "Solar photovoltaic (PV) is a very exciting technology, but the current technology is not economic," said Borenstein. "We are throwing money away by installing the current solar PV technology, which is a loser." In his January working paper, "The Market Value and Cost of Solar Photovoltaic Electricity Product," Borenstein also found that, even after considering that the panels reduce greenhouse gases, their costs still far outweigh their social benefits. The bottom line, Borenstein argues in his paper, is that solar PV panels are not ready for widespread installation. Rather than subsidizing residential solar PV installations, as many states do, he favors more state and federal funding for research and development. "We need a major scientific breakthrough, and we won't get it by putting panels up on houses," he said in a recent interview on campus. "It is going to come in the labs." Solar photovoltaic panels generate more power on summer afternoons when the sun is shining most intensely, which is also when the value of electricity is higher for most U.S. electricity systems, Borenstein noted. Proponents of the devices have pointed out that most previous analyses fail to address that fact. Borenstein uses actual wholesale electricity prices and simulated data to calculate how much that timing enhances the value of solar photovoltaic panels. He found that the favorable timing of solar PV production increases its value by up to 20 percent. However, the premium value of solar PV could be from 30 percent to 50 percent higher if U.S. systems were run with less capacity and prices were allowed to rise as demand increases at different times of the day, said Borenstein, who has long advocated for such variable time pricing. He noted that U.S. systems typically operate with excess capacity and that consumers pay the same price for electricity at all times of the day. - Source 02/21/08 - Directed Self-Ordering of Organic Molecules for Electronic Devices A simple surface treatment technique demonstrated by a collaboration between researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Penn State and the University of Kentucky potentially offers a low-cost way to mass produce large arrays of organic electronic transistors on polymer sheets for a wide range of applications including flexible displays, “intelligent paper” and flexible sheets of biosensor arrays for field diagnostics. - Source 02/21/08 - New Books Expose Patented UFO Technology, Exotic Propulsion Systems Luke Fortune has released over 3400 pages of proof that man has had the ability to build UFO craft, in replicable form, over the last 100 years. This disclosure effort includes: * 260 patents explaining the science of various propulsion systems that have been seen by witnesses that have been misidentified UFOs * How these craft can be glowing balls of light invisible to radar * How these are saucer, sphere, cigar, or triangle shaped * What the technology is that nullifies gravity and inertia keeping the pilots safe from high speed maneuvers and right angle turns that would kill ordinary pilots in conventional aircraft * The different forms of technology that can be implemented into various craft to cause these phenomenal propulsion abilities: * Electromagnetic/Electrokinetic propulsion (Electrogravitic) * Plasma thrusters * Magnetohydrodynamic propulsion * Inertial propulsion * Fusion, fission, and anti-matter propulsion technologies * Even traditional airfoil/air-flow technologies, for people who refuse to grasp the other available technologies * Technology is in encyclopedic format, with a Primer for ease of explanation. * Online videos to educate how this technology works, presented in easy to grasp layman vocabulary. * Prospectus available on how this technology can be used to improve the global economy, raising the standards and quality of life for all people - Source 02/21/08 - Orgone warrior Wayne Dotson makes “orgonite tower busters,” organic resin disks the size of hockey pucks that are filled with metal filings and crystals. He and a small army of “cell-tower gifters” around the world say that the disks, when placed near cell towers, convert “deadly orgone energy” from radio transmissions into “positive orgone energy.” While anybody can hope for world peace and good karma, orgone warriors actually engineer devices that charge the ether, ward off the fascist plague and disrupt government mind-control experiments. Orgonite tower busters were invented in2000 when Reich-inspired researchers supposedly discovered that an organic fiberglass resin poured into small molds with metal shavings has the ability to transfer deadly orgone energy into positive energy. Through further trial and error, it was discovered that placing a quartz crystal in the mixture amplified the effect. The resin shrinks during the forming process and compresses the crystals, creating polarized endpoints in the crystal (called a piezoelectric effect). Orgone warriors like Dotson have a multitude of strategies aimed at saving the planet from destruction. He has installed what he calls a cloudbuster in his backyard. It’s five-foot-tall bundle of copper tubes imbedded in an orgonite and crystal base. By focusing orgone energy on the clouds, it’s Dotson’s personal effort at protecting our climate. - Source 02/21/08 - NIST Working On "Deathalyzer" "In this approach, NIST researchers analyze human breath with 'frequency combs,' which are generated by a laser specially designed to produce a series of very short, equally spaced pulses of light. Each pulse may be only a few million billionths of a second long. The laser generates light as a series of very narrow frequency peaks equally spaced, like the teeth of a comb, across a broad spectrum." The goal is to create a fast, low-cost method for detecting disease. - Source 02/21/08 - Gravity Lamp Grabs Green Prize "A lamp powered by gravity has won the second prize at the Greener Gadgets Conference in NYC. From the article, "The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours. To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp ... Moulton estimates that Gravia's mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year." The article contains links to the patents and the designer/inventor Clay Moulton's site." - Source 02/21/08 - Airport Security Prize Announced "Verified Identity Pass, a firm that offers checkpoint services at airports, has announced a $500,000 award for any solution that will make airport security checks quicker and simpler for passengers. The cash prize will go to any individual, company or institution that can get customers through airport security 15% faster, at a cost of less than 25 cents per passenger, using technology or processes that will be approved by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Passengers must not need to remove their clothes or shoes, something that slows down processing significantly. "We're looking at moving things that are conceptual or in the lab to things that we can deploy," says company spokesman Jason Slibeck and added that over 150 individuals, start-ups, defense contractors and universities have shown an interest in the prize. One promising procedure is mass spectroscopy, which involves analyzing the mass-charge ratio of ions on a swab sample taken from a passenger's clothing or air collected from around them to spot traces of substances including explosives or drugs. The Pre-Registration Package Information Sheet is available online." - Source 02/21/08 - Infrared LEDs make you invisible to CCTV cameras This German exibition is showcasing bright infrared LED devices that overwhelm the CCDs in security cameras, allowing you to move through modern society in relative privacy. - Source 02/21/08 - Pentagon investigated lasers that put voices in your head A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away. A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written. - Source 02/21/08 - How I built my house of Straw for £4,000 "Actually, you could make it for less than that," James says. "I'd cut the wood myself next time instead of going to the sawmill. That would knock off a thousand." He finds the whole concept of mortgages quite amusing. His home is strong, warm and utterly watertight. The only maintenance is a lime wash on the walls every year or two. The turf roof repairs itself. "I'm building a water wheel next," James says. "In the meantime, I'm getting power from a car battery that my partner, Eli, charges for me at her house. You'd be amazed what you can run from that battery - a digital recording studio, a stereo, tools, lights and a laptop." James, 52, a software engineer, took 10 months to build his house, finishing it in November last year. Now, he's set up a website about straw-bale homes, runs eco-engineering courses and takes commissions making straw-bale buildings; the latest is a changing room for a Hull primary school. The benefits run much deeper than simply wanting to save cash and the planet. "Now that it's built, the initial buzz has grown into a sort of permanent primeval satisfaction. I sit here, it's warm and quiet and there's snow flying past the windows, and I think: yes, this is what it's all about." Straw bales can be used to make all kinds of buildings. If you're just building a summer house, you may not need planning permission. The best way to get started is to go on a course or help someone else build a straw-bale house; James's website can put you in touch with someone. But it's not hard to do it yourself, he says. "Straw is perfect for a beginner. It's easy to work with and you can make your house any shape you want. You can use straw to make any kind of buildings - from a four-storey office block to a house I know, which is a spiral. Go mad, have fun, start living!" It'll help to follow these seven steps. But you will need a bit of DIY sense - and some manual labour from your friends. - Source 02/21/08 - Female G spot 'can be detected' The mysterious G spot - supposedly a route to female sexual satisfaction - can be located with ultrasound, claim Italian scientists. Some women say stimulating a certain part of the vagina triggers powerful orgasms, but medicine has not been able to pin down the exact location. Researchers told New Scientist magazine they found an area of thicker tissue among the women reporting orgasms. - Source 02/21/08 - The towns where people live the longest The quest to live longer is one of humanity's oldest dreams and three isolated communities seem to have stumbled across the answer. So what can they teach us about a longer life? Something remarkable links the remote Japanese island of Okinawa, the small Sardinian mountain town of Ovodda and Loma Linda in the US. People live longer in these three places than anywhere else on earth. What is even more intriguing is that each community is distinct from the others and raises a different theory as to why residents live longer. In all three communities scientists have dedicated themselves to trying to uncover these unique secrets. - Source 02/21/08 - Hospital 'code blue' deadlier at night Many hospitals call it "code blue," a signal given over the intercom when a patient's heart has stopped. When code blue works well, a team speeds to the bedside and revives the patient. The graveyard shift is the worst time to call code blue, a new study finds. Patients who go into cardiac arrest while in the hospital are more likely to die if it happens after 11 p.m., when staffing may be lower or patients watched less closely. Researchers found among the late night cases a higher portion of instances where patients were discovered with no heart electrical activity, that is, too late to deliver a lifesaving shock. Staff who are fatigued, less experienced or too few in number could be to blame, researchers speculated. Weekends had lower survival rates than weekdays, but the difference wasn't as pronounced as between late night and daytime hours. Only in the emergency room was there no night-or-day difference in survival. The study was based on an analysis of more than 86,000 cardiac arrests in more than 500 hospitals over seven years. - Source 02/21/08 - Scientists find way to tell age through eyes The new technique uses radiocarbon dating to measure special proteins known as lens crystallines that develop around birth and remain unchanged for the rest of our lives. They are the only part of the body apart from teeth that do so. The researchers correctly identified the ages of 13 people within one-and-a-half years by analyzing a carbon isotope called carbon 14 trapped inside the crystallines, they reported in the journal PLoS One. The technique employed in the lens analysis is based on the sudden increase in atmospheric carbon 14 beginning in the 1950s until a test ban a few years later when the Soviet Union and the United States began testing nuclear bombs. These experiments more than doubled the amount of atmospheric carbon 14, which gradually began to decline toward normal levels after the ban, Lynnerup said. Scientists have recorded these levels annually, giving the Danish team a benchmark to date a person's birth by matching the corresponding year in which the carbon 14 atmospheric content was as high as in the person's eye lens. - Source 02/19/08 - Invention Machine Inventor offers cure for Electoral College problem Dr. Koza's reputation precedes him, featured recently in Popular Science Magazine with his 'invention machine', evolutionary programming that alters its own code to find far more complex solutions to problems. The invention machine has created antennae, circuits, and lenses, and has received a patent from the US Patent Office. Other accomplishments of Dr. Koza's include the co-founding of Scientific Games Corporation, a company which built computer systems to run state lotteries in the United States. He is also responsible for the scratch-off lottery ticket. Dr. Koza first made public his idea of circumventing the more than two-hundred-year-old electoral college system in 2006. His proposal calls for an interstate compact that requires every state's electoral votes to be cast behind the winner of the popular vote. "We're just coming along and saying, 'Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?'" - Source 02/19/08 - Invention improves efficiency of catalytic converter A new type of catalytic converter has been created that improves the efficiency of the converter by focusing on the air to fuel ratio. By controlling this ratio and maintaining a certain amount of oxidants in the converter better efficiency can be achieved. The inventors, who have received a US patent for their creation, use a computer to calculate the difference between the amount of oxidants in the converter and the amount that should be in there. The air to fuel ratio is subsequently adjusted to either produce more hydrocarbons or more oxidants creating a balance. This means that lower amounts of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide particles are released into the atmosphere through the tailpipe. The new technology intends to fix unnecessary complexity and a delay in the reaction that occurs in most catalytic converters without the new system, journalgazette.net reports. - Source 02/19/08 - Tech firm pays workers to dream "Oceanit is a company that's always learning and growing because its people are curious," said Ian Kitajima, the company's marketing director. "When we hire, we hire people who are Oceanit-like .... At Oceanit, you've got to be smart, in some cases brilliant." The company, which specializes in the aerospace, engineering, life sciences and information technology fields, has innovation right in its name: the "it" in Oceanit stands for "innovative thinking." To further promote a work culture based on creativity, Oceanit two years ago launched an internal research and development fund to help pay for projects and inventions its staff of 150 might come up with. To date, the company has funded eight internal invention ideas, including flame-retardant concrete, a "smart" electrical socket and Waters' idea to convert incinerator ash into building material. Oceanit says the program, which awards up to $50,000 twice a year for internal projects, helps create an environment where its workers can get excited about their work, and tell other potential employees about it. - Source 02/19/08 - Future of India-U.S.-China triangle will be invention-based: expert The competition among India, China and the United States will not be for natural resources such as oil and gas but for intelligence and creating knowledge that spark inventions, said Yan Xuetong of the Tsinghua University, China. The future will be based not on technology but on knowledge that will be put to creative use to make inventions, he said here on Wednesday at the concluding session of the three-day conference on the “India-China-U.S.A. Triangle,” convened by Centre for National Renaissance, New Delhi. - Source 02/19/08 - To save the world we may have to waste it Even the most damaging fossil fuel - coal - will probably show peak production before 2030. Once coal goes into decline it’s game over for industrial civilisation. There is simply no other concentrated source of energy to fall back on. (Nuclear energy resources are too limited.) Our industrial activity must decrease because “energy” is defined as “the capacity to do work” so less energy means less work done. The current, suicidal path of our civilisation was understood decades, if not centuries ago. With this knowledge the only sane course of action has been to turn back, reduce our energy use, reduce our consumption, stabilise our population and try to find ecological balance. If you forced me to wager money on whether the world’s billions of human inhabitants will unite in self-imposed austerity to overcome climate change or, instead, will ignore their own children’s long term best interests and continue to consume and pollute then I would bet on the latter. If some of us adopt frugality but the rest do not stop population growth then our species will reach its resource limits with many more mouths to feed than if we all consumed as wastefully as possible. - Source 02/19/08 - Fun Size Countries: The Insane Histories of the World's 6 Tiniest Nations Do you ever get the urge to just start your own country, with your own damned rules? Well, some people actually do it. All it takes is a small, uninhabited piece of land you can claim (though it helps to also be completely insane, or to have balls the size of watermelons). - Source 02/19/08 - New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water "The folks at Penn State have now developed a process that more closely mimics the photosynthesis process in plants, and while we won't pretend to understand all the nitty gritty of dye usage and other such nonsense, we do know that such a system could eventually attain 15% or so efficiency, providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future." - Source 02/19/08 - The Dumbing of America "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels. Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games. - Source 02/19/08 - 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life. To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better. -