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March 2006 Plenum News
2006 (enhanced)
2005 (enhanced)
Entire Year (minimal, early formats)
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.
03/31/06 - Clean the Blood, Cure Bird Flu?
 (There is a similar device patented in Germany claimed to cure AIDS. It uses a quartz tube through which live blood is passed where it is exposed to UV light and Ozone, causing the blood to 'cold boil' and kill off all viruses and bacteria. The blood is then filtered and returned to the body. - JWD) California researchers say a blood-cleaning machine could save lives if bird flu becomes a pandemic. Fighting viruses by cleansing the blood might sound too good to be true, and many infectious disease experts say it is. The device, called the Hemopurifier, performs a type of dialysis. According to James Joyce, founder and CEO of Aethlon Medical in San Diego, it can also remove smallpox and the Ebola and Marburg viruses. The Hemopurifier works against so many different viruses, according to Joyce, that the device could one day serve as a "portable immune system." The technology consists of a traditional dialysis machine rigged with a cartridge invented by Aethlon scientists. As blood flows through the device, Joyce said, the Hemopurifier filters out viruses, allowing the patient's embattled immune system to become strong enough to fight off the disease. The cartridge contains fibers with pores large enough for viruses and toxins to pass through. The viruses bind to proteins arranged outside the fibers. The cleansed blood then returns to the bloodstream. Traditionally, cleansing the bloodstream of toxins is a process known as hemofiltration. The process has been used to treat sepsis, and even Anthrax and Marburg infections, which is why Joyce believes the Hemopurifier will work.
03/31/06 - Floating wave generator cleans water
 Waves are nature's method of incorporating oxygen in water bodies. This observation led wave generator inventor Per Andersen to create steep artificial waves that deliver the mixing properties of natural waves, but unlike natural waves, the wave train can have an exceptionally long range of influence. Compared to other mixing devices such as turbines and bubblers, the steep artificial wave is the only one that is capable of long range mass transportation of surface wave and floating matter. Removal of surface debris from urban water bodies is a natural application for the Andersen Floating Wave Generator (AFWG). Ice control in cold climates is another natural application. Warmer below-surface water is moved upward by the AFWG and thus prevents ice formation or, over a period, melts and breaks up, ice already formed.
03/31/06 - Many Overrate themselves and are unaware of their Incompetence
When asked, most individuals will describe themselves as better-than-average in areas such as leadership, social skills, written expression, or just about any flavor of savvy where the individual has an interest. This tendency of the average person to believe he or she is better-than-average is known as the "above-average effect," and it flies in the face of logic… by definition, descriptive statistics says that it is impossible absurdly improbable for a majority of people to be above average. Clearly a large number of the self-described "above average" individuals are actually below average in those areas, and they are simply unaware of their incompetence.
03/31/06 - Defeating Maxwell's Demon
 (Recieved this pre-publication note from the author, the article describes his solid-state experiments in extracting electricity from temperature differentials. - JWD) Maxwell's demon - An imaginary creature who is able to sort hot molecules from cold molecules without expending energy, thus bringing about a general decrease in entropy and violating the second law of thermodynamics. As promised last year, my article on violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics has finally been published in Infinite Energy Magazine. The article gives a simply apparatus that accomplishes the generation of electricity directly from the molecular motion of molecules of air: http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue66/index.html - 21 Maxwell's Pressure Demon and the Second Law of Thermodynamics by John Marshall Dudley. Correction from Marshall Dudley: This is incorrect. There is no temperature differential, it actually extracts energy directly from the motion of the molecules, resulting in a cooling of the gas without any low temperature sink at all. IE it
breaks the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
03/31/06 - Gold nanoparticles emit intense heat
Nanoparticles of gold can act as tiny, precise and powerful heaters, which potentially could be used in biomedical applications, according to a new study. When stimulated with the right frequency of laser light, a small collection of metal nanoparticles, such as gold, can heat an area up to 1,000 times its size, according to Ohio University scientists Hugh Richardson and Sasha Govorov. The heating properties were observed in ice, water and a polymer shell that was designed to mimic material in biological systems. Though the ice did not melt when heated by low-intensity laser alone, it dissolved once a gold nanoparticle was embedded, said the scientists, whose findings have been published online by the journal Nano Letters. The gold particle is 50 nanometers, which is 200,000 times smaller than an object 1 centimeter in size, Govorov said. The process not only generates a considerable amount of heat at much larger scale than the nanoparticle, but also is very precise, the researchers report. In a biomedical application, a few gold nanoparticles could be used to generate heat to impact a single macro-scale object, such as a tumor cell. "What's amazing is that we're taking particles that you can't even image with a light microscope, and all of the sudden they cause a huge change in a macroscopic system," said Richardson, whose project was funded by Ohio University's NanoBioTechnology Initiative, one of three major research priorities of the institution.
03/31/06 - DIY gadget helps spot melanoma
 To make a lighting device to evaluate skin pigmentation in different skin layers, there is special light adapter needed in order to take multispectral pictures of skin. As there are different optical properties of skin pigments, there were 4 different light sources chosen. blue ?= 470 nm - highly absorbed by epidermal melanin, green ?= 576 nm - hemoglobin peak, red ?= 660nm - epidermal dermal boundary, IR ?= 865 nm - low absorption, sensitive to scattering to measure papillary dermis thickness. White LED is optional, to make normal pictures of skin. For getting multispectral images of skin, there was developed lighting source for “Nikon Coolpix E3100” digital camera. As this light adapter is hand made and calibration is poor, there still can be good results obtained. This experiment was made to prove, that handheld digital camera and simple lighting adapter can be used to show relative diagnostic results while inspecting skin lesions. (via boingboing.com)
03/31/06 - Video Games for Pain Distraction
A Wheeling Jesuit University student study suggests playing sports and fighting video games produces a dramatic level of pain distraction.
03/31/06 - Generating Electricity from Resonance
 Macrosonics uses shaped, oscillating closed cavities to control harmonic phase and amplitude which can produce standing wave overpressures in excess of 340% of ambient pressure. Thermoacoustic engines have been proposed as a means of driving piston-actuated electric alternators to produce electric power. Resonant Macrosonic Synthesis (RMS) resonators are either pulse combustion driven or thermoacoustically driven for the purpose of energy conversion, having specific applications to electric power production. RMS resonators as a pulse combustion chamber in order to maximize the acoustic reaction force for a given fuel consumption rate, thereby improving fuel-to-electric transduction efficiency.
03/30/06 - Overview of the TPU (Toroidal Power Unit) of Steven Mark
 In the inventors words; "There has been a concerted effort to eliminate anything I may have to say and to discount the validity of the technology. This is done by attacking me rather than the demonstration as viewed in the video tapes. That is because most of the demonstrations I gave were to engineers and scientists who confirmed the validity of the power generated by my technology. Lay people do not understand just how difficult if not impossible it would be to fake what is shown in the video tapes of the demonstrations." "The multiple frequencies traveling around the coils are of too high a frequency to provide for any motive effort. They are only a means to achieve an end. The multiple frequencies begin to feed themselves and the multiple kicks become a combined big kick. I call it resonating. That is why if you notice in the video tapes that it takes just a few seconds for the coil to begin to function at maximum effort. You see, one little kick amounts to nothing. However imagine if you had hundreds of thousands of little kicks combining into one big current kick . . . I originally got the idea from electron circuits which use vacuum rectifiers like the 5U4 GB or 5AR4 etc. The plate has a high voltage potential with lots of useable power available. You can't get to it or use it for anything without applying a heating voltage to the cathode or what is the cathode potential of the tube. So, you put in a small voltage of 5 volts AC 60 Hz which heats up the cathode and welcomes the electron stream from the plate. Or actually the other way around, but not important for this example of my thoughts. Now the high voltage power goes through the cathode and travels through the coils of the 5 volt transformer along with the 5 volt AC. If the plate voltage is not rectified then it is AC with a potential 60 Hz frequency. That combines with the 5 volt 60 Hz in the coil of the htr transformer and generally amounts to nothing. In fact the power of the 5 volt transformer amounts to nothing. It is an insignificant power supply except when the two transformers get slightly out of phase with each other, or when they are connected in reverse of one another. Then you can measure all kinds of things going on. You can generate all kinds of hash and multiple frequencies, and I do mean all kinds. What I measured during this process was very interesting. All these frequencies occasionally met at the same time with a much larger kick at the output." ...and much, much more at this link...
03/30/06 - Research for why Sun's corona shines hotter than the Sun itself
Chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses, Pasachoff led an expedition of dozens of scientists and students to record images from the rare, three-minute event. They are capturing data over many eclipses to understand better why the Sun's corona, the outer halo of million-degree gas, shines hotter than the Sun itself. Most of the corona is visible from Earth only for the fleeting time that the Moon totally blocks the Sun's direct rays.
03/30/06 - Bugged Chinese PCs could spy on the US
 Now that China owns IBM, they are in a prime position to install hidden trojan horse type spy circuitry to use against unsuspecting buyers. The congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission is questioning a decision by the U.S. State Department to buy 15,000 PCs from Lenovo, the largest Chinese brand of computers, citing fears that the computers could be BUGGED. Lenovo bought IBM's PC business last year.
03/30/06 - Ways To Disappear and Live Free
To "live free" means to be able to control your own life and to avoid violence, or the threat of violence, by others. To "disappear" means to make it impossible for other people to invade your personal world of freedom. This "disappearing" of individuals is obviously discomforting to institutions and governments determined to control personal activities in the Land of the Free. To them it appears downright seditious, since in reality their power depends directly on the number of people they can control -- through computerized records, of course. To those who actually "disappear", however, the act is one of tremendous personal liberation. Free men owe very little to those who restrict opportunities on the basis of past records. The object is for individuals, acting as individuals, to declare their mental independence from whatever System is attempting to enslave them. As individuals they are the best judges of what degree of slavery they can accept, how far down the road they can go before becoming robots for BIG BROTHER. There are numerous intermediate tactics between total compliance and complete disappearance, such as refusing to give your Social Security number (or giving it incorrectly), avoiding taxes, obtaining several foreign citizenships and passports, setting up bank accounts in several other countries, and planning at least two routes of escape to other countries, but in the end you will discover there really is no freedom in the world -- *YOU MUST CREATE YOUR OWN*. You must learn how to protect your own rights as you define them. No one else will do it for you, *NO ONE*.
03/30/06 - Report Phishing to shutdown their sites
 Phishing starts with stealing logos and images, spoofing emails and creating fake websites all in an attempt to get the unsuspecting to click on that link and hand over their personal information which eventually turns into identity theft. Typically you’ll get an email requesting a verification of your account information which appears to come from a legitimate source. The account in question happens to be with a financial institution or trader, an online entity such as Paypal or Ebay, an ISP (MSN, AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, Telus, Adelphia etc), an online retailer, insurance company, online Tax filing, or a Credit Reporting Agency (Equifax, Transunion, Experian, and Novus/Innovis). The next time you get an email from your bank, eBay, or even God, trying to scam your account information, don't let your feelings get hurt, get PIRT: the Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination squad. Phishing is the prevalent online fraud using spam to trick people into giving up their financial data. A volunteer organization of security professionals has formed PIRT to tackle the "last mile" of the internet scourge: processing reports and contacting site owners where the scam sites are hosted and convincing the admins to take down the phish sites hiding on their hacked servers. Even before its complete launch, PIRT shut down more than two dozen phishing sites within a couple hours of receiving the reports. You can submit phishes to PIRT or forward the fake phishing email to pirt (AT) castlecops (DOT) com . Other options, including software based ones, can be found here. Don't just catch and release that phish, bash its head with a rock. (SPREAD THIS AROUND PLEASE!!!!)
03/30/06 - Microgravity effects in bed
"New Scientist Space is reporting that the health effects of microgravity can be reproduced by staying in bed. Inclining the bed at an angle of 6 degrees with the head at the lower end produces bone and muscle loss, decreases in cardiovascular activity, and reduced capacity to exercise similar to those produced by prolonged spaceflight."
03/30/06 - Unmanned Aerial Surveillance of US citizens!!!
 "Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, but now the Bush administration wants to use them for domestic surveillance. A top Homeland Security official told Congress today, according to this CNET News.com article, that: "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory." One county in North Carolina is already using UAVs to monitor public gatherings. But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? A pilot's association is worried."
03/30/06 - Electricity Allergy?
Power quality is a well-known problem in the utility business, caused by the proliferation of computers, lighting dimmer switches, energy efficient bulbs, and other modern electronic gadgets. These new devices cause a more complicated use pattern for electricity than old-fashioned items such as incandescent bulbs, producing negative feedback involving high-frequency peaks, harmonics and other noise on electric wiring... The change in power quality means more variable electromagnetic fields, and possibly more biologically active ones, are associated with electricity than there used to be. This is a possible explanation for the rise in electrosensitivity complaints in the view of Denis Henshaw, a professor at the University of Bristol in Britain, who is an international authority on the health effects of power transmission lines. He says that if electricity were flowing in a constant way, most people's bodies would likely adapt, but with all the interference from modern devices, the resulting fields are too variable for people to get used to. "We just don't get to adapt to these because they don't have any special pattern to them," he said. "There is no proof of this, it's just an opinion."
03/30/06 - Software tells you if you're boring
 Researcher Rana El Kaliouby's program is based on a machine-learning algorithm that she trained by showing it more than 100 8-second video clips of actors expressing particular emotions. The software picks out movements of the eyebrows, lips and nose, and tracks head movements such as tilting, nodding and shaking, which it then associates with the emotion the actor was showing. When presented with fresh video clips, the software gets people's emotions right 90 per cent of the time when the clips are of actors, and 64 per cent of the time on footage of ordinary people... Getting the software to work is only the first step, (researcher Rosalind) Picard warns. In its existing form it makes heavy demands on computing power, so it may need to be pared down to work on a standard hand-held computer. Other challenges include finding a high-resolution digital camera that can be worn comfortably, and training people with autism to look at the faces of those they are conversing with so that the camera picks up their expressions. (via boingboing.com)
03/30/06 - Psych trick to pick your Carpenter
(This is such a neat thing to discover a detailed oriented employee which is what I'd want building my stuff. - JWD) When a carpenter approaches you for a job, pick up some paperwork and absentmindedly hand him a bunch of nails as you begin to talk. If he doesn't turn all the nailheads the same direction while you are speaking, he is not your man.
03/29/06 - Office for Bio-Town prototype opens
 The BioTown Task Force, a group comprised of government, academic and alternative fuel industry leaders, among others, charged with the job of making the first community to run completely on biorenewable fuels not only a reality, but a prosperous reality. Rose Energy Discovery, Inc., provides alternative energy sources for energy-intensive industry, including ethanol and biodiesel plants. Rose Energy is in the process of patenting a new process for creating natural gas from the by-products of ethanol and biodiesel plants. Three sub-committees that are focusing their attention on the second and third phases of the project, which will bring alternative electricity generation and natural gas replacement technology, respectively, to Reynolds. “There’s no model to call on because we’re doing this from scratch,” said VanVoorst. “But we may see a November groundbreaking.” However, there’s no telling what kind of groundbreaking there will be, said Snodgrass, because there is still much work to do in the way of formulating a winning combination between technology and what’s available in and around Reynolds. “It’s like looking at VHS and Beta 20 years ago,” he said. “Nobody really knows what the future of energy is. We have to try and decide what’s the best technology to develop here with the corn and soybeans, wastewater and hogs that are here.”
03/29/06 - Scientists forecast meat grown on kitchen counter
 Instead of being cut from a farm animal, the beef, pork or chicken would be grown in incubators from a few starter cells, a growth medium and some hormones to get the cells to divide. The first attempts by scientists who grow animal muscle tissue in the lab have been small in scale. But researchers are looking forward to the day when meat could be cultivated in industrial bioreactors or even in a device sitting on a kitchen counter. "Right now, the scale that's being used in the research is about one-half of a litre for ... the incubator the muscle is grown in," said University of Maryland researcher Jason Matheny. A device similar to a bread maker could one day be used to manufacture meat in the home. Matheny said muscle produced in an incubator could have reduced fat content, and the process would do away with problems such as bacterial contamination and mad cow disease. "It has the taste and texture resembling the ground meat products that are already available," such as hamburger or chicken nuggets, he said. "Producing a steak or ... a whole chicken breast is a much more difficult task, technically," said Matheny. People would have to pay more for cultured meat than for the genuine article.
03/29/06 - Laser Spark Plugs
The spark plugs inside an internal combustion engine erode and need to be replaced regularly because high voltages are required to ignite the engine fuel. Colorado State University is patenting a new fibre that promises to be strong enough to feed laser power to spark plugs. The fibre is hollow, 700 micrometres in diameter and filled with helium. The internal surface of the tube is coated with a 0.2 micrometre layer of reflective silver. The silver coating should stop light from escaping and the inert helium should prevent the creation of any sparks inside the fibre. Infrared light from a neodymium-YAG laser is fired into the tube, which carries it round bends and into the engine cylinders where a lens focuses all the energy onto a fine spot. This triggers the electrical breakdown of gas inside the cylinder and generates a plasma spark that ignites the fuel.
03/29/06 - Nose Cleaner helps relieve colds and allergies
 People have long used 'ear candles' to suck earwax from the ear using heat. Now come something called the 'NetiPot' which claims to let the user achieve and maintain a healthy sinus system, because a well-irrigated nasal cavity. Bytheplanet.com sells neti pots, which you fill with warm salt water and pour into one nostril until it pours out the other nostril. (via boingboing.com)
03/29/06 - Diabetes limb loss 'unnecessary'
People with diabetes are having to have unnecessary lower limb amputations, a study has suggested. Diabetes can lead to amputation because of damage to the nerves and blood vessels that serve the limbs. People with diabetes are 15 times more at risk of lower limb amputation than people without the condition. A survey of 30 people with diabetes, aged between 60 and 80, who had had amputations, found 90% had been considered high risk in the period leading up to the procedure. A history of ulcers, nerve damage, circulation problems and foot deformities can all put people at high risk of amputation. Douglas Smallwood, chief executive at Diabetes UK said: "It is shocking that some people with diabetes are getting sub-standard specialist foot care, or even none at all, if they are at high risk of amputation.
"We know that the rate of amputation may be reduced by 40% or more through effective care. "All people with diabetes should receive at least a yearly foot check. "Those who have problems need to be provided with a foot care plan which incorporates specialist care and education on what to look out for and how to avoid infections."
03/29/06 - Using Fear as a Motivator for Change
 Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence Magazine, said that it was not right to use the fear of peak oil to try and motivate people to change. He said that he had been around since the 1950s, and that then people tried to use fear of nuclear waste to get people to change, in the 60s it was fear of chemical pollution, in the 70s it was the fear of nuclear power, in the 80s nuclear bombs and so on… All of those positions tried to terrify people into change and none of them really worked. His view was that we should be helping people towards values of compassion and peacefulness, as a positive step, not because people are scared of the consequences but rather because they can see the benefits of doing so. To say we are all doomed, peak oil is inevitable and you can do nothing about it, promotes fear, and then leaves people in a place where they can do nothing, promoting powerlessness and apathy. It is the same between a religious tradition which says “you WILL go to hell unless you do EXACTLY what we say”, and one which promotes self-discovery and inner awakening, even though that process may involve having to sit with some uncomfortable realisations occasionally. To say “here is a problem, this is the extent of it, but here is what we can do”, strikes me as not promoting fear at all, rather the opposite, offering a way forward through what most people feel on a deep level, to be profoundly uncertain times.
03/29/06 - Hack your brain with an IPod or personal MP3 player
 It's called entrainment. It sounds like mumbo jumbo, and the web page makes it look like mumbo jumbo, but there are some real scientific principles behind it, (here's their theory page) inasmuch as you can generate definite physiological effects using it that cannot be explained with a placebo effect. What is it? Well, basically, the idea is that you can modify the electrical activity in your brain (the stuff that's picked up by EEG readings) by hearing sounds that mimic those waves. But since the human hearing range doesn't extend to that level, instead, you listen to two similar but different sounds, one in each ear, and the resonance between them delivers the effect of the frequency. The upshot of it is, you pump the sound into your brain via your ipod, and you sleep deeply or just relax, feel like you've had too much coffee, generate lost time, or even like you're getting a tooth drilled. And yes, there's also sexual stimulation, sexual simulation, and LSD simulation. You can get the generator here and download lots of presets for it, including the ones I linked above, here. You might want something that can do a "download all links on page" like Download Accellerator so you can just grab each category in its entirety. The source files are very small. You can use the software to make wav files out of them, which you can then convert into mp3 or aac for use in your ipod or other audio device of choice, or burn to a CD.
03/29/06 - Essential Oil for Healing
AROMATHERAPY is one of the most ancient healing methods, and is the science of utilising aromatic essences extracted from plants for health and healing. The natural essences are used to balance and harmonise the energies that operate within us, and promote the health of the body, mind and spirit. The oils can be sniffed directly, sprayed, taken as inhalation, or more usually, diffused into the air using a burner or diffuser. They can also be used as direct applications to the body, as massage oil, or incorporated into soaps, body care items and even in household sprays and insect repellents. Modern day aromatherapy owes its renaissance mainly to the work of the French. Among them was Dr Rene-Maurice Gattefosse, who accidentally discovered the healing power of lavender oil in his cosmetic laboratory. He had plunged his burnt hand into the oil thinking it was water, and was surprised to see rapid healing. He continued to apply the oil until it healed, leaving no scar at all. The rest is history? During World War II, his colleague, Dr Jean Valnet, used essential oils to fight infections when his antibiotics supply ran out, and saved many lives. Recent studies have shown that they have amazingly high antioxidant properties. We are all familiar with the importance of having enough antioxidants to fight the harmful free-radicals that damage our cells and slowly cause us to age and develop chronic degenerative diseases. The free-radical fighting ability of antioxidants are measured in ORAC units (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). Broccoli and spinach have ORAC values of 890 and 1,260 respectively. The berries (blueberry, strawberry, raspberry and others) have ORAC scores of between 1,200 and 2,400 (highest in blueberry). But the superstar of berries, which is the Ningxia wolfberry or gou-ji, has ORAC value of over 25,000. It is also very rich in life-force. But even the best fruits do not come close to the ORAC power of essential oils. The weakest of them have ORAC values above 2,000. Lavender essential oil has ORAC value of nearly 3,700. Lemon essential oil is over 6,000, lemongrass nearly 18,000, cinnamon bark over 100,000 and, hold your breath - clove essential oil has ORAC power of over 10 million! With that kind of capacity to knock out harmful free-radicals, we should not be surprised at all that essential oils can heal. Essential oils have long been shown to have antiseptic, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal and antiparasitic properties.
03/28/06 - Highest Paying Google Keywords
 New program from Google lets you discover what keywords to best target for your site. With AdSense, Google advertisers pay the website owner for each click, purchases are not necessary.
03/28/06 - China invents new device to catch drug addicts
 Chinese scientists have invented a device that can detect a drug user simply from the way his pupils react to certain rays. In the tests, 891 cannabis smokers were mixed with 826 non-drug takers. The device was able to catch 93.94 per cent of the addicts if they smoked the drug the day before the test, and 88.52 per cent of them if they did it six days before. No non-drug takers were mistaken for smoking the drug in the tests, scientists with the department of science and technology said. For addicts to opium or its related drugs, lights of certain wavelength and intensity make their pupils expand and contract, they said, adding that the new device can find out "how much a person is addicted to drugs." The technology is obviously more advanced than similar detection techniques applied by police across the country, and it will be a good help if promoted nationwide, the scientists said.
03/28/06 - Disorder helps to 'hyperfocus' waves in time reversal acoustics
 (This has serious positive implications for tapping ambient, chaotic forces including tapping the vacuum. You will note the frequency rods used by Keely in the attached photo snippet. - JWD) For every burst of sound, there must exist a sound that bursts in reverse, according to the theory of time reversal acoustics. Time-reversed focusing is based on the fact that when a wave is played backwards in time, wavelengths will retrace their paths. Although theoretically the overlap should be exact, the actual time reversal mirrors (TRMs) that play back the waves can not “catch” every frequency of the original wave. The team used a TRM that consisted of an array of 41 transducers, which recorded the original waves and then focused the waves back to the source. The transducers play the role of microphones and loudspeakers because they act as “reversible” devices. Although the 41 transducers try to capture as many of the original waves within a phononic (vibrating) crystal as possible, several frequencies slip through the cracks, which reduces spatial focusing for the return waves. Sometimes, frequencies that would normally not pass through the TRM can be directed toward the mirror by a medium with large apertures and significant disorder. In this case, when the 41 transducers try to capture waves propagating through a medium of steel rods arranged randomly in water, the rods scatter and redirect otherwise-lost frequencies into one of the transducers. The ability to catch these misguided frequencies is called “hyperfocusing.” When the physicists observed time reversal in a phononic crystal, however, they did not observe the hyperfocusing effect. “This is the first time that a time reversal experiment has been performed through a phononic crystal, i.e. a perfectly ordered material,” said Tourin. “The comparison between a phononic crystal and a disordered medium shows that disorder plays a clear role in the so-called ‘hyperfocusing effect.’”
(via zpenergy.com)
03/28/06 - Seagrass is in decline worldwide, says UNH researcher
Around the world, seagrass beds - shallow-water ecosystems that are important habitats, food sources, and sediment stabilizers - are in decline, says Frederick Short, research professor of natural resources and marine science at the University of New Hampshire. And as these underwater meadows disappear, so do commercially valuable shellfish and fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, water quality, and erosion prevention. Short is founder of SeagrassNet, which monitors seagrass health at 45 sites in 17 countries worldwide.
03/28/06 - Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip
 European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together. The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons. To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size. They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive. "They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy. The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons. Researchers are now working on ways to avoid damaging the neurons during stimulation. The team is also exploring the possibility of using a neuron's genetic instructions to control the neuro-chip.
03/28/06 - The changed world of 2050
Homes boast entire roofs made of solar tiles and rooms are kept warm by insulating wallpaper, commuters travel on electric trams and hydrogen cars and the harsh elements of the Orkney Isles have been tamed to become a major engine room of our economy. Oil has defied pessimists and is still being found in the North Sea - but it's now used exclusively in the petrochemical industry and to keep aircraft flying. And a new 500-mile underwater link has been made with Iceland to capture heat from the perpetual hot springs. There's still a role for king coal - but the black diamonds are now of the green variety. (via www.alternative-energy-news.info)
03/28/06 - Self-Cooling Beer, 30 Degrees Cooler in Three Minutes?
 The I.C. Can automagically lowers the temperature of beer in a can by 30-degrees Fahrenheit in three minutes, using a combination of vacuum heat pump technology and insulation that’s safe and environmentally friendly. The I. C. Can is about the same size as a 16-ounce beer can, yet its small cooling mechanism still leaves enough room for 12 ounces of brewski. When activated, the all natural desiccant contained within a vacuum draws the heat from the beverage through the evaporator into an insulated heat-sink container. It is this patented vacuum-power which lowers the temperature so dramatically and quickly, leaving the beverage inside cool and refreshing.
03/28/06 - Evans Oak Ridge report on Electric Power from Spacetime - 2005
This is sent to you as soon as possible because of the urgency of the energy crisis. The Schwarzschild metric is used in the Coulomb and Ampere Maxwell laws from my almost unanimously acclaimed unified field theory. The overall conclusion is that such power is available in unified field theory but is very small in magnitude if based on the contribution of the earth's curvature to that of one classical electron. Therefore claims to have observed such phenomena must be based on state of the art amplification or on very good experimental designs. Such claims should in my opinion be evaluated with urgency but utmost care in the best laboratories worldwide. If verified a new era of humanity emerges. If not verified we at least now have a theory that is predictive and useful. The wild claims of pseudo-scientists are most harmful to physics and to the U.S. People and its constitutional servant, the U.S. Government. These claims are totally misleading.
03/28/06 - Free Energy Chip - Refutation of Evans claims & comments/notes
 (This link was provided by Jim Day. It does not deal with the claim of the chip itself, rather with the association with the work of Myron Evans. - JWD) Stefan Hartmann writes "Adolf Schneider (from Net-Journal Magazine) in Switzerland is holding a conference with these guys from et3m soon. They want to be distributor for Switzerland (Europe) for this technology. Until the conference they keep all other things quiet," he wrote. / Myron W. Evans work, focuses on atomic level physics, including "development of energy ex vacuo, theory and patented devices, and the theory of general unified field theory of sub atomic particles, with applications to nuclear waste stabilization." (Looking at the Free Energy Chip image which shows 4 disconnected meters, then 4 connected meters attached to a 'black box' which is apparently intended to operate the two AC fans. I doubt the 'black box' is extracting AC from the vacuum unless it is rectified and stored as DC to be fed into an internal INVERTER circuit which would provide 60hz for the fan motors. Unfortunately, the site provides no details as to power produced or components used. - JWD)
03/28/06 - Ontario offers to buy homemade electricity
Ontario is offering to subsidize homeowners and businesses that switch to renewable power sources like solar panels or wind turbines. The government will pay an inflated price for the energy for 20 years to help make the project attractive: 42 cents a kilowatt-hour for solar and 11 cents for wind, biomass, or small hydroelectric projects. The program is also being pitched to homeowners, but the upfront costs - as much as $30,000 - are substantial. Experts say it could take 20 years before homeowners pay off their initial investment and turn a profit.
03/28/06 - A translation of Evans theory from Terry Bastian
 Translating the Investigation page is: The atomic theory demonstrates that a kilogram of mass contains ninety thousand trillions of Joules, to 1 kg = 9.0x1015 J, and if we transformed that kilogram of mass into Watts-hour we have by each kilogram of mass twenty-five billion KiloWatts-hour, 1 kg = 2.5x1010 KWH. In our circuits of low power we used 10 mg of mass gallium-quartz silicon-germanium-arcenuruio, those 10 mg of mass give to two hundred fifty million KiloWatts-Hora (250,000,000 to us KWH) and if we used this circuit to feed a motor on a KW of consumption, it will be in continuous operation during 28.530 years, (E=mc2), (E??=m c2). This one investigation is well formed to count on a viable power alternative and economically profitable, as they will see, lack to investigate much, to develop, but already we counted on some circuits that have had good results, obtaining sustantial savings of energy. (Thanks Terry, the most informative part was the circuit material but they don't say how they stimulate it or how the energy translates to DC or AC. - JWD)
03/28/06 - Free Energy Chip
 I received this information from Duncan at Nexus Magazine. If anyone has any additional information about this company or the process behind the claimed technology, please Email Me and I will share it on the website and send to Duncan. The company appears to be based in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. Duncan provided the following additional information: * Inventor is Aureliano Horta. * The company's name is ET3M. It seems to be based in Mexico. Unfortunately, their website is only in Spanish: http://www.et3m.com/ * The theoretical concepts behind the invention seem to be originating from research by a man named Myron Evans. He is said to have finally come up with a unified field theory, basing his own research on Einstein and Elie Cartan. Here's a website, that discusses him: http://www.atomicprecision.com/ * I will fax you two articles in English; one is rather recent, the other describes an event that happened already in the early nineties, but with the same people. It seems that the invention has come a long way, definitely not out of nowhere. * There's a company, that is currently drumming up people worldwide to throw in venture capital into this, named EAVCF/Euro-American Venture Capital Federation, based in Oregon, USA. * The colleagues from Net Journal (http://www.borderlands.de/inet.jrnl.php3), a magazine around all things with free energy, seem to be heavily involved in the European marketing. They could probably tell you more. They might also be knowledgeable about where you could find a contact in the Southern Hemisphere. - Islas Baleares #110-A, Col. Lindavista, C.P. 37300, LEON, Gto. (Guanajuato) MEXICO - Teléfono y Fax: +52(477)-773-78-05
03/27/06 - 25 Interesting inventions from 2005
 1 - The Liperator increases the possibility for better understanding of a telephone conversation by a hard-of-hearing person through use of sound from the phone line to generate realistic lip movements viewed on a screen by the listener. 2 - Magnetic Levitation Arrow Rest (Air-Rest): An arrow literally floats on air, only touching the bowstring of a bow, by a special arrangement of rare earth magnets to achieve magnetic levitation. 3 - The Strawjet is a farm implement that processes straw (wheat, flax, sunflower, tobacco, hemp, etc.) in the field after the plant has been harvested, into a mat, similar to a large bamboo window blind. This is used to construct composite building panels in much the same way as fiberglass or carbon fiber, but uses a binder made from paper pulp, clay, and cement rather than plastic resin.
03/27/06 - Stabilizing rings for stable helicopter flight
 Helicopters are tricky beasts to keep aloft and stable. Full-size birds do it with skilled pilots, while most unmanned craft rely on gyroscopes and autopilot. To stay pointed in one direction, the Picoflyer, like many real whirlybirds, uses two sets of counter-rotating rotors, which offset the opposing forces that occur when an engine drives a propeller in flight. (If the rotors are driven one way, the engine and fuselage spin in the opposite direction.) But to keep from pitching or rolling out of control, the Picoflyer relies on a passive- stability system that adds no extra parts or weight. If the helo starts to tilt or lean one way, the ringed rotors naturally tilt equally in the other direction, bringing the bird back to level. Continuous little adjustments help it maintain a stable hover.
03/27/06 - Harvesting Collective Genius
 The New York Times has an interesting article on an interesting business strategy used by a company called Rite-Solutions. The system recognizes the need for harvesting ideas from the entire company instead of just one or two "idea-men" in a stock-market-esque idea exchange. From the article: "We're the founders, but we're far from the smartest people here," Mr. Lavoie, the chief executive, said during an interview at Rite-Solutions' headquarters outside Newport, R.I. "At most companies, especially technology companies, the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. So we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius."
03/27/06 - Ice Energy's Cool Add-On Ups AC Efficiency 30%
 Ice energy, which is an old idea given new life. The company is named Ice Energy, and the company's Ice Bear system manufactures ice in huge quantities and stores it in a copper tub lathered with insulation, for distributing of cool air via a storage module that consumes much less power and is more eco-friendly than traditional air conditioners. Large companies that have installed this system have seen their fuel bills drop by 15 percent. "Officials at Victorville City Hall are running one of Ice Energy's cooling units as part of a free demonstration project. After about three months, the city will look at the energy savings and may order three to four units for city buildings, said Jon Gargan, Victorville's director of community services"..."The city of Anaheim is also participating in the pilot project". "The Ice Energy device includes a storage unit containing water is attached to the air conditioner. During the night, when the air conditioner is working most efficiently, the water is frozen. Then during the day, that ice provides a cool environment for the air conditioner to transfer heat from the building, increasing the efficiency of the air conditioner during hot hours, when demand for electricity peaks".
03/27/06 - Solved by science: the pensioner pervery pandemic
Readers who have been following the recent spate of senior citizen misbehaviour across Europe will be glad to hear that evolutionary biology has provided an explanation. For the uninitiated, just lately there's been the Russian OAP's porn crypt, his countryman who became a porn star at 75, and the poor Italian policeman who pulled over a swerving car to be confronted by a 70-year old nude nonna humping the driver. Thank crivens for Roxana Torres and colleagues, of the Institute of Ecology at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, and their paper: “Senescent birds redouble reproductive effort when ill: confirmation of the terminal investment hypothesis,” published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The terminal investment hypothesis is a pretty intuitive idea and should be the same for all long-lived species. Simply put if you know you are not long for this Earth then the trade-off between everyday survival and reproductive effort tips in favour of getting one's end away. Although the hypothesis was proposed way back in 1966, before this new study in birds, evidence to support it had so far been scant. The implications here are obvious - old folks just can't help themselves.
03/27/06 - First Steps in Controlling Gravity
 Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria; Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris; and colleagues have measured the effect in a laboratory. Their experiment involves a ring of superconducting material rotating up to 6 500 times a minute. Superconductors are special materials that lose all electrical resistance at a certain temperature. Spinning superconductors produce a weak magnetic field, the so-called London moment. The new experiment tests a conjecture by Tajmar and de Matos that explains the difference between high-precision mass measurements of Cooper-pairs (the current carriers in superconductors) and their prediction via quantum theory. They have discovered that this anomaly could be explained by the appearance of a gravitomagnetic field in the spinning superconductor (This effect has been named the Gravitomagnetic London Moment by analogy with its magnetic counterpart). Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. "This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday's electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831. It demonstrates that a superconductive gyroscope is capable of generating a powerful gravitomagnetic field, and is therefore the gravitational counterpart of the magnetic coil. Depending on further confirmation, this effect could form the basis for a new technological domain, which would have numerous applications in space and other high-tech sectors" says de Matos. Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts. Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.
03/27/06 - Earth water originated from comets?
 Icy comets embedded the in belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter may point to the origin of Earth’s own water supply, scientists said Thursday. Asteroids tend to be made of rock and metal. Comets, which typically spend most of their existence beyond Neptune and visit the inner solar system infrequently if ever, hold more water ice and other icy chemicals and are often called icy dirtballs. Astronomers believe that the Earth formed under hot and dry conditions, relying on ice from comets to build up its stores of water and become habitable. But studies of traditional comet ice have found that their water composition is quite different that that of Earth’s oceans, Jewitt said. Main-belt comet ice appears to have formed while the solar system was still a vast protoplanetary nebula of raw material under much warmer temperatures than the conditions where traditional comets formed, out in the Kuiper Belt on the frigid fringe of our planetary neighborhood, Jewitt said.
03/27/06 - Talking human like mannequin face
 (This was just too cool not to post. At Disney, they project the images from the outside on a contoured blank face...this one projects from inside. Imagine the possibilities for fun, mischief and possible commercial applications mostly, I think, for the consumer industry! One Star Trek II episode had a wedding dowry box beamed aboard with a human-like face that came to life when it sensed its target and announced the wedding was afoot. - JWD) "Chatty, a talking mannequin with a human face, is on display at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2006 (at Tokyo Big Sight through March 26). Developed by Ishikawa Optics & Art Corporation, Chatty has a face that is brought to life by means of a video projector inside its head." (via makezine.com)
03/27/06 - More sleep, higher death rate
A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep.
03/26/06 - Z Machine showed Overunity? 4X more out than in?
 (Thanks to Benjamin Rozanski for the headsup. - JWD) Scientists at the Sandia National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory have produced plasma at a sizzling two billion kelvins - hotter than a star's interior - although they're not quite sure how they did it. 20 million amps of electricity pass through a small core of vertical tungsten wires finer than human hairs. The core is about the size of a spool of thread. The wires dissolve instantly into a cloud of charged particles called a plasma. The plasma, caught in the grip of the very strong magnetic field accompanying the electrical current, is compressed to the thickness of a pencil lead. At that point, the ions and electrons have nowhere further to go. Like a speeding car hitting a brick wall, they stop suddenly, releasing energy in the form of X-rays that reach temperatures of several million degrees - the temperature of solar flares. The X-ray output was "as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input" meaning that some extra energy must have been pumped into the equation from somewhere. Secondly, "high ion temperatures were sustained after the plasma had stagnated - that is, after its ions had presumably lost motion and therefore energy and therefore heat - as though yet again some unknown agent was providing an additional energy source to the ions". A possible explanation for the mystery came from Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines of Imperial College in London, which appeared in the 24 February Physical Review Letters. In summary, Haines theorised that "the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion plasma temperature was achieved by unexpected instabilities at the point of ordinary stagnation" (where the plasma's particles "should have been unable to travel further"). Haines postulates "some unknown energy" which continued to push back against the magnetic field for around 10 nanoseconds.
03/26/06 - Solar Thermos collects, purifies and stores hot water
 With Alex Kee’s solar kettle, you just leave it out in the sun, attend to other matters for an hour or two, and have boiled water when you return home. It is also a thermos flask because if boiled before sunset the water can be kept hot throughout the night, losing only about 5°C (41 degrees F.). Kee, 45, said his invention, which he has named the Solar Kettle-Thermos Flask (SK-TF), could be the answer to providing safe, solar-pasteurised drinking water in a sustainable and renewable way. Kee said that as an alternative to chlorination and UV disinfection, heating water to 65°C for six minutes, or to a higher temperature for a shorter time, would kill all harmful germs, parasites and viruses, including the Hepatitis A virus. “Boiling water takes time and uses up scarce fuel resources, especially in remote areas, but solar energy is free to be converted into thermal energy,” he added. “There is good sunshine there and all you need is a one-time delivery. And glass, if unbroken, can last a thousand years.” For more information, log on to www.solarkettle.com. Correction from Yehuda: Please note that in the passage, taken from your page, the piece about "5°C (41 degrees F.)." should be corrected. 5°C stands for a difference of temperatures, which is much smaller than (41 degrees F.). The conversion would be correct when addressing absolute temperatures (0°C is warmer than 0°F). - Thanks!
03/26/06 - The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon & Synchronicity
 Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information- often an unfamiliar word or name- and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. But what is the underlying cause? Is there some hidden meaning behind Baader-Meinhof events? The phenomenon bears some similarity to synchronicity, which is the experience of having a highly meaningful coincidence… such as having someone telephone you while you are thinking about them. Both phenomena invoke a feeling of mild surprise, and cause one to ponder the odds of such an intersection. Both smack of destiny, as though the events were supposed to occur in just that arrangement… as though we're witnessing yet another domino tip over in a chain of dominoes beyond our reckoning....more info...
03/26/06 - Stem cells, telomerase and rejuvenation
 Leonard Hayflick discovered that most human cell lines, unless they are tumor lines, begin to die off after about 50 cell divisions. The 50-division threshold is known today as the "Hayflick limit" after the discoverer of the aging process in human cells. Today their lifespan can be maximized by growing them on "feeder layers" of mouse embryonic cells. The mouse cells have some unknown substances that the human cells like. "We showed [in 1961] that when normal human embryonic cells are grown under the most favorable conditions, aging and death is the inevitable consequence after about fifty population doublings," The chromosomal recapping action of telomerase is one of the factors that scientists are presumably leaning on when they refer to embryonic stem cell lines as "immortal." The lines include five cell lines at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. UW stem cell scientist James Thomson developed the lines in 1998 and then collaborated with the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California, which makes telomerase. Geron is also collaborating with stem cell researchers at John Hopkins, Cornell and other universities. According to Geron, embryonic stem cells, unlike adult stem cells, make plenty of their own telomerase and thus have the capacity for "self-renewal." Their chromosomes get a regular recapping. Plus their chromosomes, up until now at least, appear normal under the microscope. The chromosomes in some cell lines develop all sorts of problems, including deletions and additions of genetic material and bizarre configurations. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) owns United States patent 6,200,806, for the production of 'Primate embryonic stem cells', a claim to the human embryonic stem cell. The patent covers both the method of isolating the cells and the cells themselves, putting the university, some say, in the driver's seat when it comes to embryonic stem cell research and resulting therapies.
03/26/06 - World’s most powerful diesel engine
 The super size Wartsila-Sulzer motor is 2300 tons turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine. It achieves108,920 hp at 102 rpms and is 89 feet long and 44 feet high. Especially designed for container ships, the crankshaft of the engine alone weighs 300 tons. The cylinder bore is just less than 38? and the stroke is just over 98?. Equipped with big 14 cylinders it consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour with each cylinder displacing 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and turning out 7780 HP.
03/25/06 - The Lithium-Ion Car
Altair Nanotechnologies of Reno, NV, says its new electrode materials allow higher bursts of power, longer battery life, and more available energy storage capacity -- and far quicker "fill-up" -- than previous lithium-ion batteries. The goal: an electric car that performs as well as a conventional car. The batteries use a safe, stable structure that increases their lifetime by preventing the electrodes from expanding and contracting as the ions move in and out -- a principle reason for the eventual death of conventional lithium-ion batteries. The batteries can also handle big bursts of power, which occur in both fast charging and quick acceleration. An electric vehicle using their batteries could charge in about the time it takes to fill a tank of gas and buy a cup of coffee and snack -- six to eight minutes. This efficiency and an expected range of 200-250 miles could make such an electric car more appealing to consumers than GM's now-discontinued EV-1, for example, which took six to eight hours to charge and had a range of only 75-130 miles, depending on conditions.
03/25/06 - Changing Firefox 1.5 'Unresponsive Script' Notice
 One of the “features” of Firefox 1.5 is a pop-up dialog that appears whenever a page takes too long to load that reads, “Warning: Unresponsive script. A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.” To which I ask, “Why, Mozilla? Why?” I run into this error a lot since I upgraded to Firefox 1.5, especially with the slow-as-snails installation of MovableType we wrestle with each day to publish Lifehacker. Happily it’s not hard to delay this annoying dialog. To do so: 1. Type about:config in Firefox’s address bar. 2. Filter down to the value for dom.max_script_run_time. 3. Change the value to something higher than the default (which is 5.) I set mine to 20. 4. Bask in interruptionless browsing!
03/25/06 - Cold Fusion Heating unit
On the 17th anniversary of Dr. Martin Fleischmann's first public revelation of room temperature, non-radioactive nuclear fusion, D2Fusion, Inc. is proud to announce Dr. Fleischmann's agreement to serve as its senior scientific advisor. In brief, "cold fusion" involves the fusion of two nuclei of deuterium or heavy hydrogen into a single helium atom accompanied only by a burst of heat. Unlike "thermonuclear hot fusion" that requires the plasma-inducing inferno of the sun or a hydrogen bomb, solid state fusion reactions can be produced at normal temperatures in certain hydrogen-loving metals without unleashing hot fusion's dangerous radiation. Many experimental reports suggest the importance of nanoscale reaction sites and the occurrence of coherent quantum electrodynamic (QED) states that circumvent the strong mutual repulsion of positively charged deuterium nuclei. The QED features are markedly similar to processes now familiar in solid state physics, such as superconductivity, and have led the company to conclude that "solid state fusion" is a more accurate and fruitful characterization of the field. "True, our theoretical grasp of all the processes in play remains imperfect, but neither can we fully explain the workings of aspirin, acupuncture or high temperature superconductivity. Unresolved questions about their mechanisms have not stopped us from enjoying their respective benefits, which are pale indeed compared to what solid state fusion offers. We are now certain that heat generation from this process is copious, safe, inexpensive and reproducible, and in terms of commercialization that seems like a perfect place to start."
03/24/06 - A cure for endless used tires
 The new invention, P2GTR, utilizes recycled tires ground up to a 30 mesh size particle (about the size of a small grain of sand) as the base material. The process uses an electro magnetic reactor and water to disintegrate the ground tire rubber into a nano-size devulcanized polymer composite made up of Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR), Styrene Butadiene Styrene (SBS), and other tire components. The process allows the polymer to retain elastomeric and durability characteristics that are present in tires. Until now, these characteristics have not been able to be retained in other tire recycling or devulcanizing methods. Over 50 billion pounds of virgin polymers are used per year worldwide, primarily in roads, roofing, car parts and new tires. The new recycled composite P2GTR may be cross linked to accommodate any of these industrial uses at a considerable cost savings. Tests have revealed performance of the P2GTR composite to be better than that of the original manufactured polymer due to specialized crosslink technology used to alter and finalize characteristics of the polymer composite for specific uses. Manufacturers of asphalts such as Marathon, Citgo, Valero, and Calumet are enthused about the new polymer composite invention that will allow the use of the recycled elastomeric polymer to be used in roads and roofs which may lead to near perpetual roads and roofs, sooner than anticipated due to the endless supply of scrap tires in landfills, performance of the polymers, and economics of the process.
03/24/06 - Inflatable Solar Cone
 The SunCone is an inflatable, cone-shaped system that focuses sunlight on a target rod for conversion to electric power. The Suncone is made of an aluminized film (usually nylon or Mylar) with a transparent film over the end facing the sun. It maintains its shape through air pressure. The prototype is approximately 2 meters long with a 1.5-meter radius at the wide end. The system, if successfully completed, will be less expensive and labor-intensive than standard parabolic dish or trough design and require less precise placement, according to Barnabus. The Suncone can achieve temperatures or 2000 degrees C and has a collection efficiency of 90% at 600 degrees C, according to Barnabus Energy.
03/24/06 - Aspirin cure for eye infections
The active ingredient in aspirin can inhibit bacterial growth on materials used in contact lenses and catheters, a researcher has found. Microbiologist Mahesh Bandara found in laboratory studies the salicylic acid in aspirin can prevent bacteria taking hold on biopolymers - plastics designed to be compatible with the human body. Dr Bandara said salicylic acid was effective against a bacteria called Pseudonomas aeruginosa, the main culprit in eye infections. In rare cases, Pseudomonas aeruginosa can cause the potentially-blinding microbial keratitis infection.
"High concentrations of salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, prevented the bacteria from adhering or colonising," Dr Bandara said. He found salicylic acid inhibited the production and activity of surface-associated molecules in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, essential for adhesion. Dr Bandara said salicylic acid and other common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), reduced the production of toxins by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, lessening the destructive effects of infection.
03/24/06 - New EM field artificial heart implant
 A new type of artificial heart device, in which the only moving part is suspended in an electromagnetic field and does not touch any other part, has been implanted in a 67-year-old man in Greece. It is smaller, expected to last longer and to cause fewer clotting problems than similar devices. The device, called the WorldHeart rotary ventricular assist device, was developed in Utah and is made by WorldHeart Corp., based in Oakland, Calif. The device is smaller than similar pumps, allowing it to be used in smaller adults and adolescents, and a tiny version is being developed for use in infants and children. The WorldHeart VAD was described by the hospital as the only “bearingless, fully magnetically levitated implantable pump under study in clinical trials.”
03/24/06 - Nuclear bombshell only confuses the issue
'Nuclear is a low-carbon technology with an impressive safety record in the UK. Nuclear could generate large quantities of electricity, contribute to stabilising CO2 emissions and add to the diversity of the UK's energy supply.' Given the above statement, you could be forgiven for believing that the SDC had endorsed nuclear as a key technology for meeting the UK's future energy needs. A cautious endorsement no doubt, and one hedged around with caveats concerning safety, security and cost - and quite rightly so. But an endorsement nonetheless. Wrong. The SDC politely nodded its head to nuclear, then gave it a well-aimed kick in the you-know-whats. No, it concluded, a new generation of nuclear stations is not the answer to the UK's security of energy supply, or to tackling climate change. Its report, which is impressive in breadth and depth, unearthed a list of 'major disadvantages' to nuclear energy.
03/24/06 - Sunlight charges up mobile battery
 The Solio charger which opens out to reveal three solar panels costs as little as £50 to buy online. It can be used with most phones and an hour of sunlight will give the user enough power for 60 minutes talk time. Celebrity designer Oliver Heath, who is promoting the device on his new website www. ecocentric.co.uk, said: "It's a real boys' toy a great way for someone with a mobile who wants to be more environmentally friendly but does not want to carry around a variety of power leads.
03/24/06 - The BioFuel Con
"By 2010, 5 per cent of all the UK's fuel will come from biofuels," says the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling. "By then it will be saving us around one million tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions a year." But hang on a minute. Biofuel is fuel from crops: where will they all be cultivated? If we grow them here, we will have to plant almost half of our arable land with oil crops, largely rape, by 2010. And that's only the start - the idea is to increase biofuel use until it powers 40 per cent of our cars, buses and lorries. The conclusion is inescapable: the fuel will have to be imported. But from where? Even before it starts exporting biofuels, Brazil's headlong rush into agro-exports, particularly soya (fed to cattle and chickens in Europe and Asia), is ravaging precious ecosystems. The Pantanal, the biggest wetland in the world, located near Brazil's border with Bolivia, is expected to disappear by 2050. The Amazon forest is near to the "tipping point", after which rainfall patterns will be permanently disrupted, fires will proliferate and the forest will begin to die. Adding a vast biofuel industry to this picture, which is what the British government's energy ambitions imply, would be catastrophic. It may appear environmentally responsible to switch to biofuel, but growing huge quantities of sugar cane or maize or soya for the purpose will actually hasten the global environmental crisis.
03/24/06 - 1000 Suns From Huge Concentrating Dish
 Israel’s National Solar Energy Center will start testing a 400 square meter (4,300 sq ft) solar collecting dish. The huge dish is capable of achieving 1000 suns - it can concentrate the intensity of the sun's energy by a factor of a thousand. The dish is lined with 216 mirrors, but not more than a quarter will be uncovered to sunlight for the initial experiments. The mirrors concentrate the light onto a small square of concentrator photovoltaic cells, which convert the light into electricity. The concentrator photovoltaic panel is only 10 cm by 10 cm and is too small to absorb the energy from the whole dish.
03/24/06 - Liars don't fidget, they stay still
Forget the fidgety liar nervously blinking, scratching his nose and stroking the back of his head. Researchers have found that liars stay motionless and control their blinking as they try not to give anything away. When liars do use their hands, they use extravagant movements to cover up their dishonesty, stretching out their arms or rhythmically jabbing the air to emphasise a point. "There is a popular perception that things like scratching the nose, playing with the hair, increase with people lying," said Samantha Mann, a psychologist at Portsmouth University. "People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget more, but our research shows that is not the case.
03/24/06 - Government Department of Homeland Security shoots down movie script
 A Los Angeles screenwriter is claiming that the Department of Homeland Security has informed him that he may not use the agency's name "or any of the Department's official visual identities" in the script for his film, Lady Magdalene, despite the fact that the film presents a positive image of the DHS. The writer, J. Neil Schulman, said Tuesday that he had received a notice from Bobbie Faye Ferguson, director of the NHS's office of multimedia, informing him that his "project does not fit within the DHS mission and that it is not something we can participate in." In response, Schulman wrote to Ferguson that he had already received assistance from a special agent of the NHS's air marshal service while he was preparing his screenplay and that the agency's notice to him now represents a violation of his First Amendment rights. "Merely the claim that you have the power to restrict such official images is chilling to the process of writing and producing a movie -- and certainly to an independent film in pre-production with a start date for principal photography only six weeks away," Schulman wrote.
03/24/06 - Magnetic Cockroaches?
 (Just a bizarre patent claiming this, might tie in with Grebennikov and insect chitinous carapaces. - JWD) The judges awarded the sole patent rights for a high tech cockroach trap to a company which produced materials used in the control mechanisms of the Martian Rover. Development of the trap - which uses a magnetic powder to stick pesticide to the insects’ legs - had been held up by legal action over who owned the invention. “The poison sticks to their legs by using a magnetic powder and they then walk around, passing it on to fellow cockroaches." The legal dispute began after Mr Metcalfe suggested the use of magnetic powders to Professor Philip Howse of Southampton University, who had patented a cockroach trap which used electrostatically charged powders to stick the poison to the insects’ legs. Mr Metcalfe realised that Prof Howse’s invention depended on an electrostatic powder which would lose its stickiness over time, especially in humid conditions. Magnetic powders do not lose their stickiness. Lord Justice Jacob, giving the ruling of the appeal court today, said: “When Professor Howse learned that the magnetic particles worked just as the electrostatic particles had done, he caused the University to apply for a patent.”
03/23/06 - Samsung develops silent flash-chip drive to replace hard disk
 The 32-Gigabyte (GB) NAND flash-based solid state disk (SSD) can upload and download data quickly and quietly as it uses instantly-accessible, static NAND flash memory instead of the rotating discs found in hard drives. SSD weighs only half as much as a hard drive, reads data three times faster and writes data 1.5 times quicker, it said. It consumes a mere five percent of the electricity needed to power a hard disk drive and operates silently as it requires no motor or any other noise-making parts. It marked the first time that NAND flash chips, which are usually used in small devices such as digital cameras and MP3 players, have been applied to a mobile computer, it added. "Flash memory will fast replace hard disks in all mobile computing applications," Hwang was quoted by the Korea Herald as saying at the forum. Hwang said that by 2008, laptops equipped with SSD will account for 30 percent of the global laptop market as the price of a 32-gigabyte SSD will fall from the current 500 dollars to 200 dollars in that space of time.
03/23/06 - Arizona hopeful it can power up with wind
From the Hopi Reservation in the north to the Willcox Playa in the south, developers and entrepreneurs are figuring out ways to harness the wind. Thus far, only one project is under way: the Steel Farm Project, due to be up and running north of Kingman within a year. The plant, with 15 wind turbines that will stand 350 feet high with 90-foot blades, will put out 15 megawatts of power. All of it has been purchased by Arizona Public Service. The newer machines, which are much taller and much larger, can convert enough wind to drive the cost per kilowatt-hour down by 80 percent, according to one calculation, from earlier days of wind generation. The problem in Arizona is that the wind is intermittent. So while a large array of tall windmills can generate considerable power at optimum wind speeds, anywhere from 12 to 25 mph, wind cannot replace other sources of energy. Christine Real de Azua of the American Wind Energy Association said elevation is a key to successful generation here. That is why the plants under consideration are at 3,000 feet or higher. She points out that nationally, wind power has grown from 2,500 megawatts to almost 10,000 in the space of five years, both because more wind farms are being constructed and because turbines are becoming more efficient. But they need wind. For now, researchers have erected a 165-foot tower, equipped with various monitors to gauge wind speed, frequency, direction and temperature, on the edge of a mesa.
03/23/06 - Cosmic Radiation Speeds up Aging in Space
 Consider a pair of brothers, identical twins. One gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into deep space. The other stays on Earth. When the traveling twin returns home, he discovers he's younger than his brother. The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Rocketing to Alpha Centauri-warp 9, please-is a good way to stay young. Or is it? Some researchers are beginning to believe that space travel could have the opposite effect. It could make you prematurely old. "The problem with Einstein's paradox is that it doesn't fold in biology-specifically, space radiation and the biology of aging," says Frank Cucinotta, NASA's chief scientist for radiation studies at the Johnson Space Center. While the astronaut twin is hurtling through space, Cucinotta explains, his chromosomes are exposed to penetrating cosmic rays. This can damage his telomeres-little molecular "caps" on the ends of his DNA. Here on Earth, the loss of telomeres has been linked to aging. So far, the risk hasn't been a major concern: The effect on shuttle and space station astronauts, if any, would be very small. These astronauts orbit inside of Earth's protective magnetic field, which deflects most cosmic rays. Like the fuse of a time bomb, telomeres are long strands of repeating DNA that shorten each time a cell divides. When the telomeres become too short, the cell's time is up: It can no longer divide, a state of affairs known as "replicative senescence." Without this built-in fuse, human cells would be able to continue growing and dividing indefinitely. In fact, scientists believe that cells evolved telomeres as a way of preventing the out-of-control cell growth of cancerous tumors. Because of telomeres, most human cells can only divide 50 to 100 times before the time bomb goes off. One current theory of aging holds that, as the cells of a person's body start to hit this telomere-imposed limit, the lack of fresh, new cells causes the typical signs of aging: wrinkled skin, failing organs, weaker immune system, etc. Whether or not telomere loss actually causes aging remains a matter of debate, Shay notes. The fact that shortened telomeres go hand in hand with aging is well documented. People with shorter telomeres, for example, are known to not live as long on average as people with longer telomeres.
03/23/06 - Power company subsidizes lighting conversion
Why would a power company subsidise the sale of lightbulbs that use less electricity? At a time when suppliers are seen as rapacious profit-takers, the idea that any would be encouraging us to use less power might seem perverse. Yet Powergen, one of the UK's largest energy suppliers, is offering cash sponsorship to 200 major retailers around the country to enable them to sell compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) - which use about one-fifth as much power as normal incandescent bulbs, last more than eight times longer, but cost between £2 and £8 - for about 50p. That means the typical household could change all its lightbulbs (24 on average) to energy-saving ones for the price of a CD - and reduce its electricity bill by £240 a year. to fulfil its obligation to the government's Energy Efficiency Commitment, Powergen and the Lighting Association (the trade body for the UK lighting industry) set up the Energy Efficient Lamp Scheme (Eels) to offer bulbs at lower cost. (Powergen has also offered householders free CFL bulbs in some areas.) One key to the scheme's success is the improvement in low-energy lightbulbs. Once, £8 would buy you what looked like a miniature, pretzel-shaped strip light. But the new generation of CFLs have been scaled down and their entrails enclosed within a glass bulb, giving a look much like their incandescent ancestors, now more than a century old. A crucial advance for CFLs is the quality and colour of light they produce, which is almost identical to that of incandescents; earlier versions conjured unpleasant associations with underground car parks. By contrast the Philips Softone range, for example, produces a gentle, peachy glow, ideal for a bedside lamp or to create a warm effect in a living room. Apart from a split-second delay at switch-on, followed by a few seconds' warm-up before it reaches full brightness, the difference is imperceptible. Newer versions that work with dimmer switches are also becoming available. "Electricity counts for roughly one-fifth of our energy use, and is responsible for approximately a third of our carbon emissions. More than 70% of this electricity is generated using fossil fuels, and in the conversion process, around 65% of that energy is wasted." LED lighting is a tantalising prospect for those seeking energy efficiency. Their potential lifespan is at least five times that of a fluorescent lamp, and up to 100 times that of an incandescent bulb. They are also much more efficient. Galani says that incandescent bulbs convert only 5% to 8% of their energy into visible light; halogen spotlights about 12%-15%; CFLs, 15% to 20%; an LED 35%. The rest of the energy is wasted as heat.
03/23/06 - New technique could bring back use of Hemp
 Before modern day drug paranoia, hemp was long used for the production of paper, textiles, building materials, food, medicine, paint, detergent, varnish, oil, ink, and fuel. The first American flags were made of hemp fabric and books printed on hemp paper. Hemp Canvas is one of the strongest natural fabrics known to man. The complete protein in hempseed gives the body all the essential amino acids required to maintain health. Hempseed was used to treat nutritional deficiencies brought on by tuberculosis. In the old country the peasants ate hemp butter. They were more resistant to disease than the nobility....Using new DNA "fingerprinting" techniques, two University of Minnesota researchers have become the first to unequivocally separate hemp plants from marijuana plants with genetic markers. Hemp, a crop grown for durable fiber and nutritious seed, and marijuana, the most abundant illegal drug of abuse in the United States, both belong to the species Cannabis sativa. They differ in levels of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) but are otherwise difficult to tell apart. It may also prove useful in countries where the cultivation of hemp is permitted but marijuana is illegal, as in Canada and Europe. The work appears in the March issue (volume 51, No. 2) of the Journal of Forensic Science. In tests with three different cultivars of hemp and one of marijuana, the DNA fingerprints of all the cultivars were distinct and nonoverlapping. The Cannabis plant has been cultivated for millennia and is important in the global economy as both a licit and an illicit crop, said Weiblen. Hemp is a source of durable fiber that provides an alternative to cotton fabric, among other uses. Cotton requires pesticide application and a hot climate, whereas hemp does not, which makes it suitable for local Minnesota agriculture. If enough can be learned about the genome, it may one day be possible to produce an entirely drug-free hemp plant that looks different from marijuana. Currently, all hemp products are imported into the United States. Developing a new variety that could be cultivated in the United States would reduce American dependence on foreign products while creating a new alternative crop for American farmers.
03/23/06 - Hydrogen Produced From 100 Percent Biodiesel
Today, InnovaTek Inc. and Seattle BioFuels, Inc. announce the first successful production of hydrogen from 100% biodiesel in a microchannel steam reformer. InnovaTek’s reforming system was initially developed to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel. This is the first time a renewable fuel source has been used to produce hydrogen in a microchannel steam reformer to power emission-free fuel cells. In addition to biodiesel, InnovaTek has also used its technology to produce hydrogen from glycerol (a by-product of biodiesel production), and the raw soybean oil that is used to manufacture the biodiesel fuel. Microchannel reactors offer some distinct advantages over conventional reactors (tubular or vessel), including inherent safety, compact size, and high conversion rates. The microchannel reformer achieved a 100% conversion rate of the pure biodiesel (B100). The advantage of H 2 production from biomass is that renewable energy sources can be utilized thereby reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and eliminating pollutant and climate-affecting emissions.
03/23/06 - Dealing with bee stings
 Do not grab the stinger with your fingers to pull it out! You want to get it out as soon as possible because an attached muscle is pumping venom into you, but pinching it just injects all the venom at once. If you have a snakebite kit, cover the singer with the suction device and suck the venom out through the stinger. Otherwise, scrape the stinger out with the point with a knife blade or your fingernail. An onion cut in half and held on the sting for twenty minutes or more will extract most of the venom. Even mud is better than nothing. Adolf's Meat Tenderizer (MSG) mixed into a thick paste with water is best -- it breaks down the protein based venom. If you start to itch badly and experience severe local swelling, go immediatly to the emergency room or call the medics. Regardless of your past history, you may suffer a severe allergic reaction that can swell your trachea shut, asphyxiating you in a matter of minutes.
03/23/06 - Catastrophic immune response may have caused drug trial horror
A catastrophic over-stimulation of the immune system may have caused the horrific reactions suffered by six men taking part in the first human clinical trial of an experimental drug. An investigation by New Scientist suggests the drug may have caused a super-immune response - sending white blood cells called T cells rampaging through the body destroying its own tissues. The drug, called TGN1412 and made by German pharmaceutical company TeGenero, works by stimulating T cells, which could help treat leukaemia and auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. But this super-stimulation may have backfired. An immunologist contacted by New Scientist, but who asked not to be named, says: “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what will happen if you non-specifically activate every T cell in the body.”
03/23/06 - Kansas ID for police stops include fingerprints
 If you are stopped by police in Kansas, don’t be surprised if the officer pulls out a little black box and takes your fingerprints. The gadget allows officers to identify people by fingerprints without hauling them to the police station. Called the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, it is a statewide database of more than 10 million fingerprints taken from people arrested in Kansas. The Missouri Highway Patrol maintains a similar database. Both systems link to the FBI fingerprint database. In Kansas, 54 law enforcement agencies have traded the ink-and-paper fingerprinting method for biometric imaging, which electronically scans a digital image of the print. Sixty Missouri agencies use biometric scanning. Police also can scan the fingers of corpses and people they arrest to match them against prints in the system. Results are obtained in seconds instead of hours. The inked cards still used by some smaller departments are also scanned into the statewide systems. Police place a person’s two index fingers on a screen. Wireless technology sends the image to the database for comparison. Prints scanned in the field will not be stored. The system will analyze palm prints, which were stored but could not be read before. The system also will store mug shots and pictures of scars, tattoos and other identifying marks.
03/23/06 - Experimental Fuel Cell Power System Expands Flight Capabilities
Using a fuel cell instead of a battery on a small aircraft-under about 10 pounds-enables longer flight times and greater distance coverage. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Washington, D.C., is working to develop a longendurance, persistent surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can operate for up to 24 hours, which is a longer period of time than current capabilities allow. Small aircraft with traditional engines can fly for approximately eight hours, and battery-powered vehicles can fly for about one hour. Because batteries cannot deliver the required amount of sustained power to keep aircraft in the air for significant durations and because electric-powered UAVs have many advantages over unmanned vehicles that use combustion engines, researchers began looking for a power source that could both achieve longer flight times and take advantage of nontraditional power sources. Fuel cells offer several advantages over traditional power sources. For example, enemies have more difficulty detecting a fuel-cell-powered UAV than one powered by a small engine because the fuel cell system produces little noise and emits less infrared energy. Ease of use is another advantage. Fuel cell systems start up immediately and are more efficient than combustion engines. A major significance of the Spider-Lion flights is the development of a reliable fuel cell system. Swider-Lyons says the teams could fly the UAV every day because it runs so well.
03/22/06 - World’s first solar pyramid
 A Singapore-based company, MSC Power Corp, is building its first "solar pyramid" in India. The solar pyramid works by drawing in air, heating it with solar energy and moving it through turbines to generate electricity. The small scale of the power generation - up to 36 MW with the current design means it is more suitable for rural areas than for powering cities. A 10 MW pyramid plant would be about 45 metres high and take up about 2,500 square metres of space, including an associated desalination plant. The firm, MSC Power Corp, backed by private investors from the Middle East and Asia, will finish constructing a small $10 million five megawatt (MW) power station by June in Pune near Mumbai that will use solar energy to power wind turbines.
03/22/06 - HCE Files for Patent for Nano-Scale Hydrogen Storage
The device creates nanometer-scale water bubbles filled with hydrogen gas. At this scale, surface tension can maintain the gas within a bubble at very high pressure, about equal to 43,500 pounds per square inch (3,000 atmospheres) inside the bubble. The smallness of such bubbles confers on them stability against gravitational aggregation and merging. The fluid is expected to be stored, distributed and handled like gasoline. Existing hydrogen storage systems store hydrogen in high-pressure cylinders at about 3,600 pounds per square inch pressure (about 250 atmospheres). Some research labs are exploring very high-pressure storage at about 12,000 pounds per square inch (about 800 atmospheres). The invention is expected to permit the storage of gaseous hydrogen at room temperature in quasi-liquid form, having characteristics similar to gasoline. HCE reports that hydrogen stored in the form created by its proprietary device and process is expected to have a volumetric energy density (higher heating value) from about 24 to 29 megajoules per liter. The stated range is attributable to uncertainties in compressibility and small-scale cohesion factors. This compares favorably with the energy density for gasoline at about 26 to 31 megajoules per liter. The process is expected to have application to other high value gases made more usable in such a storage medium, such as natural gas a.k.a. methane and propane.
03/22/06 - Flexible LEDs a Substitute for Neon
 Mule Lighting has created a substitute for neon that’s made up of flexible LEDs that are just as bright but 70% more energy efficient. The lights also last longer than neon and are more durable, too, with their specially-designed LEDs cleverly inserted inside tough yet flexible tubes. That bendability facilitates dazzling applications as well-Mule says, “It looks just like neon…except you can tie it in knots.” To make LED-FLEX, Mule Lighting incorporated light emitting diode (LED) technology into a flexible and durable package that has the appearance and brightness of traditional neon. The uniform and super-bright light output is achieved through a proprietary optical maximization technique which is completely sealed and impervious to shock and vibration. LED-FLEX is suitable for wet locations and can withstand extreme temperatures. The product uses very little energy, requires little maintenance, and is available in a variety of bright colors.
03/22/06 - PVC Food Wrap Dangerous In the Microwave
Millions of people still use PVC wrap when cooking food in microwaves or storing meats and cheeses in the refrigerator, but there are dangers in using PVC food wrap because of the toxins contained in the popular plastic. Johns Hopkins and the People’s Republic of China have recently issued statements about the toxins found in PVC food wrap, and Wal-Mart recently reported that the company would seek out alternatives to PVC cling wrap. When PVC (polyvinyl chloride), is manufactured or subjected to high heat, the chlorine in it can chemically combine with organic materials, producing deadly byproducts known as dioxins. These dioxins can run off or leach from the PVC into the food. Dioxins are known to cause cancer, immune suppression, and birth defects in animals. The Environmental Protection Agency recently found that the cancer risk to the general population from dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known to man, is now as high as one in one hundred people. One of the more widely used additives that makes PVC soft is di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), a toxic chemical that has been associated with damage to the liver, ovaries, heart, kidneys, and lungs. Exposure to these additives and harmful plasticizers is not only through microwave cooking, but also through food wrapped in PVC cling wrap. Many meats, cheeses and other foods sold in delis and grocery stores are wrapped in PVC, and scientists have found evidence of toxic additives leaching off PVC into the food. Food wrap should not be used when cooking food in microwaves. Instead, you can keep your family safe by covering food with a plain white paper towel or use Corning Ware when cooking in a microwave.
03/22/06 - Fish Oil blocks prostate cancer
 Prostate cancer is much more likely to be life-threatening if tumour cells migrate and invade other tissues, such as the bone marrow. Lab tests found omega-3 oil - present in fish like salmon - prevented this. The results of the study, based at Manchester's Christie Hospital, are in the British Journal of Cancer. While omega-6 fats increased the spread of prostate cancer cells into bone marrow, omega-3 fats blocked this. Researcher Dr Mick Brown said: "It is possible to have a healthy balance of these two types of fat - we only need about half as much omega-3 as omega-6 - that will still stop cancer cells from spreading." Lead researcher Noel Clarke said: "Some tumours develop slowly in the prostate without producing symptoms and sometimes when symptoms do develop, it is because the cancer has already spread. "Eating a diet with the right balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats may well help to keep prostate cancer within the prostate gland where it may be monitored safely or more easily treated with surgery or radiotherapy."
03/22/06 - Ozone therapy can cure lymph cancer, says German scientist
Clinical trials conducted on rabbits in Germany have proved that ozone therapy can be an effective tool in curing lymph cancer. The therapy can also be a panacea for lymph cancer patients if the results achieved in the experiments are any indication, says Dr Hab Herman, a leading German scientist. In a chat with this website’s newspaper, Dr Herman said during the trials, rabbits with lymph cancer were administered several doses of ozone through their blood. Scientists were amazed to observe that the cancerous cells soon went missing, he said, adding that full details of the experiment would be published in May. Dr Herman, also the founder of the ozone transfusion machine, said ozone had been used successfully around the world for over 80 years in the treatment of over 150 diseases. In some clinics around the world, ozone therapy is the first agent administered to each patient who enters the clinic, regardless of his ailments, Dr Herman said. On the effects of ozone on the human body, he said a special variation of the element oxygen helps in liver detoxification, enforces decomposition of fats, improves metabolism of cells and the motor of energy production of the body. Ozone also kills many kinds of bacteria, viruses and fungi and prevents their reappearance. Dr Gorst Meyer, specialist in ozone therapy who was accompanying the scientist said the therapy has proved to be successful in the treatment of several diseases related to the heart and blood vessels, peripheral vascular diseases, cerebral vascular disease, cardiovascular disease and migraines among other illnesses. The therapy should be begun in the early stages of the disease for better results, he stressed. Ozone, which is present 25 kms above ground level, is toxic when inhaled. However, if administered into the human blood under controlled conditions, it can revitalise a patient besides assisting in bringing down cholesterol and toxin levels.
03/22/06 - Bind your own book in 5 minutes
 (This is way too cool to skip if you like books, you can print ebooks and other material for softbounds easier to read anywhere. - JWD) If you like ebooks but don't like reading them on your computer screen, this How-to post is for you. I'll show you a quick and dirty book binding technique you can use to turn your ebook into a real book with about 5 minutes worth of effort. In fact, this is so easy, you might end up self-publishing your own books on demand for profit. This process involves just a few basic steps, no sewing, or doing mini-binds (otherwise called signatures). The most time consuming part of this process is just waiting for glue to dry. (via lifehacker.com)
03/22/06 - Alternative energy attracting more investors
A perfect storm of high energy prices, government subsidies and renewed interest from Wall Street is boosting investment in wind, solar and other alternative energy projects, said fund managers and other experts on Monday at a conference on renewable energy. "This is the best time to think about energy technology whether you're a large equity fund, trying to get money for a company you're running or to make returns in the stock market," said Philip Deutch, managing partner of NGP Energy Technology Partners, a $150 million private equity investment fund.
03/22/06 - Cops hunt drinkers in Texas bars
 The War on Everything hit a new low in Texas last weekend, when fanatic undercover cops invaded bars and clubs. Their target: People having drinks. The crime? Public drunkeness. Fascist creeps from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission joined up with the police thugs from the town of Irving. Together, they infiltrated popular drinking establishments on Friday night. Once inside, they joined Irving residents at tables in the bars. And then the monsters pounced. Bartenders were targeted for serving people drinks. Some patrons were literally forced to do "sobriety tests" inside the bars. When the operation was finished, 30 people were jailed for doing nothing more than having drinks in a bar.
03/22/06 - Multi-tasking bad for you?
The article says that “[t]eenagers who fill every quiet moment with a phone call or some kind of e-stimulation may not be getting that needed reprieve. Habitual multitasking may condition their brain to an overexcited state, making it difficult to focus even when they want to.” That extends to social interaction as well, and the parents can be intimidated by their teenagers’ scattered focus.(via lifehacker.com)
03/21/06 - Man-Made UFOs in South Orange County, California
 The 3-foot hovering disks developed by two Orange County hobbyists have sparked a wave of 'flying saucer' reports to authorities. The saucers are made in the garages of Gaylon Murphy and Steve Zingali, who get their kicks shocking people and hope to earn a few bucks hawking their remote-controlled saucers. After all, a few UFO sightings can only be good for business. "We fly them in formation. It's pretty funny," said Murphy, a cardiovascular surgeon and Aliso Viejo resident. "People stop, people scream; one cabdriver ran his car up off the road." A fleet of foam-core saucers began showing up in Aliso Viejo more than a year ago. The lightweight "UFOs" are flown by remote control. A flight-ready model costs about $1,000. Composition: 1/4 -inch thick Dow Corning waterproof foam board body, reinforced with carbon fiber rods Power: 7.4-volt lithium battery, 3800-6800 Himax motor Weight: 17 to 18 oz. Speed: Up to 40 mph Maneuvers: Can fly inverted, do loops, prop hang (hang vertically), roll (with aileron model)
03/20/06 - On the horizon: a virtually perfect solar cell
 (Thanks to Manuel for the headsup! - JWD) The photoelectronic properties of indium, gallium, and nitrogen alloyed together are well known at higher bandgaps, corresponding to low indium content. The low bandgap of indium nitride suggests that by simply varying proportions of indium and gallium, it may be possible to create rugged, inexpensive devices that can convert the full spectrum of sunlight to electric current. If so, these could be the most efficient solar cells ever created. Bandgaps fundamentally limit the colors a solar cell can convert to electricity. Charge cannot flow in either a completely full or a completely empty band, but doping a semiconductor provides extra electrons or positively charged "holes" that can carry a current. Photons with just the right energy -- the color of light that matches the bandgap -- create electron-hole pairs and let current flow across the junction between positively and negatively doped layers. Photons with less energy than the bandgap slip right through the material. Photons with too much are absorbed, but since each creates just one electron-hole pair, the excess energy is wasted as heat. A one-layer solar cell with a single bandgap can theoretically reach a maximum of about 30 percent efficiency in converting light to power. In principle, dozens of different layers could be stacked to catch photons at all energies, for efficiencies better than 70 percent -- but a host of problems intervenes. The most efficient multijunction solar cell yet made -- 30 percent, out of a theoretically possible 50 percent efficiency -- combines just two materials, gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide. Gallium indium phosphide is a "ternary" compound, in which two elements from group III are alloyed with one from group V. It was Berkeley Lab's investigation of a related ternary compound that opened startling new possibilities for multijunction solar cells.
03/20/06 - TreePower in the news again
 Scientifically speaking, it was a pretty strange scene: In 20-degree weather late last month, a handful of academics were hammering nails into a tree near MIT's Cambridge campus and attaching wires to them. On the other end of those wires was a small sword of copper driven about 2 feet into the frozen earth. In between was a potential revolution in green energy. Sure enough, when the spike and nail were wired together, and MagCap engineer Chris Lagadinos threw a switch, the smallest of lights went on for the shortest of flashes. After a 90-minute series of tests using aluminum and copper nails attached to other surfaces -- including a chain-link fence and a hot cup of coffee -- it was suggested the electrical current had more to do with the metals involved. The electric tree phenomenon, it was suggested, works just like a very large, very weak battery using the electrical potential between different metals until those metals are used up.' At first we thought it was crazy," said Stella Karavas, marketing director for Canton-based MagCap Engineering. ''Then we went out outside and tested it, and sure enough, it works." MagCap now thinks it may have found the ultimate in alternative energy. The family-owned electrical components maker says it has found a way to refine a very faint source of electricity found in trees into something that can light a very small light bulb. It is patenting a device that it says can charge a battery from that electricity that, once fully charged |
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