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November 2005 Plenum News
2005 (enhanced)
Entire Year (minimal, early formats)
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11/30/05 - NE Thermo Hydraulic Geothermal Engine - the 'new Stirling'?
 Brian’s idea for the engine began in 1976 while he was working in the scorching heat of Saudi Arabia. The Natural Energy Engine™ works like a thermometer pushing the red liquid up the stem as it heats up and of course as it cooled, the liquid would come back down. Brian realized that there was a source of energy that could be put to work. The only energy sources needed to make this engine function are hot and cold water. The first model ran off of hot and cold water from his kitchen sink. At a small warehouse in Phoenix, the self-styled engineer Brian Hageman is perfecting an engine that promises to reduce the cost of pumping oil, generating electricity and desalinating water, among many other applications. Hageman's Natural Energy Engine™ uses hot and cold water to drive a piston that can be used to pump liquids or turn a wheel. The hot and cold water expands and contracts pressurized carbon dioxide to push and pull the piston. Hageman, who has patented the device in the United States and 20 other countries, said he is close to announcing a version of the engine that can be licensed to manufactures. The water can be heated using natural gas, solar panels or natural forces within the earth. Hageman, who has been tearing things apart and putting them back together since childhood, got the idea for his engine in 1976 while working as an engineer building an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. While pressure-testing pipes, he noticed that pressure continued to build after pumps were turned off. He realized that external heat caused the liquid in the pipe to continue to expand. In 1996 he formed Deluge Inc. to commercialize the Natural Energy Engine™. He continued to develop the product in incubator space at Arizona State University. Hageman raised money to fund the research by selling stock in his company to private investors. He estimates that 450 people have invested almost $10 million in the company over the past nine years. Eventually, Hageman said, he would like to take the company public. (From the video) - A normal oil pump produces one barrel per day and requires electricity to pump the oil. Using the Deluge engine, an oil well can pump from 7-8 barrels a day at NO COST, since it used carbon dioxide and 1800 degrees F. from underground hot water to produce the hydraulic power for pumping. (Liquid carbon dioxide forms only at pressures above 5.1 atm (75psi - pounds per square inch); at atmospheric pressure (14.7psi), it passes directly between the gaseous and solid phases in a process called sublimation.) Mr. Hageman continued, “The versatility of the Natural Energy Engine™ is that it can use a variety of heat sources such as solar thermal, geothermal, ocean thermal, industrial waste heat and biomass to heat the water that fuels it.” Deluge demonstrated that its engine was capable of pumping an oil well at depths ranging from 120 to 480 meters (394 to 1,575 feet), with power to spare. When asked what else is on the horizon for the NE Engine™, Hageman stated that Deluge has also begun a project using solar thermal and the Natural Energy Engine™ to power air conditioning units. Brian was excited to report that preliminary testing has shown a 75% reduction in running costs over conventional air conditioning systems. Hydraulic Engine Patent - United States Patent - 5,916,140 - Hageman - June 29, 1999 - Hydraulic engine powered by introduction and removal of heat from a working fluid - An example of a working fluid that may be utilized according to the present invention is water. Another fluid that may be utilized is mercury. Additionally, other substances that may be utilized as a working fluid include FREON, synthetic FREONS, FREON R12, FREON R23, and liquified gasses, such as liquid argon, liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, for example. FREON and related substances, such as synthetic FREONS, FREON R12, and FREON R23, may be particularly useful as a working fluid due to the large degree of expansion that they may undergo as heat is introduced into them and the tendency to return to their original volume and temperature upon removal of heat. Another example of a working fluid that may be utilized according to the present invention is liquid carbon dioxide. Other fluids that may be utilized as working fluids include ethane, ethylene, liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, liquid helium, liquified natural gas, and other liquified gases. Other working fluids may also be used, as one skilled in the art could determine without undue experimentation once aware of this disclosure. According to one embodiment, an engine with a cylinder having a diameter of about 5 inches and a piston stroke of about 18 inches generates about 10 horsepower.
11/30/05 - Power from geothermal water
Geothermal waters found in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) represent a new form of abundant and cheap energy that's sequestered in underground aquifers. The renewable energy stored in these subsurface aquifers is sufficient to power geothermal heat pumps and heat exchangers to generate electricity. The Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) and the Alberta Research Council (ARC) have teamed up to study the technical and economic feasibility of harnessing Alberta's low temperature (10 to 40 degrees Celsius) to medium temperature (40 to 140 C) geothermal resources. Preliminary estimates suggest that -- given current technologies -- the potential energy locked in Alberta's geothermal waters is on the order of two to five trillion barrels of oil equivalent. According to Rick Richardson, manager of the AGS, even one percent of the energy contained in the subsurface aquifers could dwarf the remaining oil and gas reserves in the WCSB. At present, there are more than 30,000 heat pump installations in personal residences and commercial facilities across Canada. At Springhill, Nova Scotia, heat pumps extract energy from 18-degree C waters in a flooded coal mine to heat and cool a nearby industrial complex. According to Natural Resources Canada's Office of Energy Efficiency, the Springhill geothermal project offsets the need for oil-fired electrical power generation, creating an annual energy savings of $45,000. Temperatures in the WCSB correspond with depth, increasing on average about 3.3 degrees Celsius for every 100 meters. "We're taking heat pump technology to the next level," he said. "And, there's a role for hybridization of technologies." One new technology that Potter will evaluate is Arizona-based Deluge Inc.'s Natural Energy Engine™, a noncombustible engine that uses geothermal energy, essentially replacing conventional diesel- or gasoline-powered pump jacks at wellheads. The engine contains high-pressure, liquefied carbon dioxide that is heated and cooled, causing expansion and contraction -- this change in volume pushes and pulls on a piston, creating mechanical energy. In September, Deluge won the 2005 Outstanding Technology Development award from the U.S. Federal Laboratories Consortium for field-testing its engine at the Naval Petroleum Reserve near Casper, Wyo. Deluge demonstrated that its engine was capable of pumping an oil well at depths ranging from 120 to 480 meters, with power to spare.
11/30/05 - Compressed air wind energy storage
 Two of the hurdles to relying on wind power for producing energy are the intermittent nature of the wind itself, and the fluctuating prices producers get for feeding the resulting power into the grid. In a 2003 paper entitled “Large Scale Energy Storage Systems”, six students of engineering at Imperial College London noted that compressed air energy storage (CAES) systems typically relied on plants burning fossil fuels to compress the air stored in large underground caverns, which then used this air to produce energy at peak hours. Also, besides burning fuel to complete the compression work in the first place, this air was mixed with natural gas and itself burned in a turbine to create the electricity. The researchers also noted that another approach, called compressed air storage (CAS) would hold the compressed air in man-made vessels, but that “current technology is not advanced enough to manufacture these high-pressure tanks at a feasible cost. The scales proposed are also relatively small compared to CAES systems.” Earlier in 2005, a Vancouver, B.C. company, Encore Clean Energy Inc., released news about a system it is working on that will allow wind energy producers to store energy in the form of compressed air in underground steel tanks or pipes, and release it through a special generator to create electricity when it is needed. Encore will make use of its core technology, the Magnetic Piston Generator (MPG), as the turbine for its wind energy storage systems. The MPG is a unique pressure-driven linear engine designed to generate electricity with higher fuel efficiency and lower emissions than conventional internal combustion engine-powered electric generators or even hydrogen fuel cells, according to the company. The MPG can use many different sources of energy - one of them the compressed air from these proposed wind energy storage facilities - to generate the pressures required to propel the MPG's "Magnetic Piston" at high velocities, back-and-forth, through a linear alternator to generate power according to Faraday's Law of Induction. "For example, 25% of the wind energy produced is, in turn, consumed by the air compression and storage process, then the remaining 750-kW of compressed energy could be sold during peak-demand times at prime peak prices of >10-cents per kWh, generating $75 in revenues - a 250% improvement in gross revenues for a wind farm owner.” “This retrofit wind energy storage solution should enable wind farm owners to earn the highest prices for the power they generate and give local utilities the kind of peak, on-demand, power availability that Utilities pay the most for, but which up until now, current wind farm owners could not reliably guarantee.”
11/30/05 - Coal powered fuel cells
Fuel cells are being looked to as a clean, inexpensive source of energy. Most fuel cells are seen as a potential replacement for batteries but coal-based fuel cells could have broader applications, producing general electricity for utilities. By adding oxygen to carbon in an electrochemical process, the direct carbon fuel cells (DCFCs) convert coal into electricity without burning it or turning it into a gas. The method can also use tar, biomass, and organic waste. The result is that twice as much energy can be produced from the same amount of fuel, at 20 to 30 percent lower cost and about half the carbon dioxide emissions, said Larry Dubois, SRI’s vice president. The emissions can also be more easily captured for use or disposal, he said. But clean coal technologies have been expensive, keeping them from widespread use. Environmentalists are divided in their opinion on whether clean coal qualifies as a clean technology. And fuel cells have run into serious challenges on the way to market, including regulatory, size, and price obstacles. SRI said its fuel cell will be cheap. Coal is by far the cheapest fuel source, far less expensive than natural gas or oil. SRI’s method uses half as much coal to produce the same amount of energy, further cutting costs, said Mr. Dubois. Unlike hydrogen and methanol fuel cells, SRI’s carbon fuel cells use no catalyst or costly noble metals like platinum. That again cuts costs, and should increase reliability, said Mr. Dubois. Finally, the technology makes it easier to capture carbon dioxide.
11/30/05 - Teen Repeller
 Stapleton has learned that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can which led him to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble. The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away. So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside. At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal, repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off," Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic." "It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."
11/30/05 - Chicken fat converted to biofuel
"We're trying to expand the petroleum base," said Brian Mattingly, a graduate student in chemical engineering. "Five to 20 percent blending of biodiesel into petroleum-based diesel significantly reduces our dependence on foreign oil." Mattingly's research allows biodiesel producers to assess different materials to see what works best. Producers will be able to choose the best way to convert different grades of chicken fat into fuels. Chicken fat can be a less-expensive substitute because it is available at a low cost. However, fatty acids in raw chicken fat can lead to the creation of soap during the various chemical processes. In his studies, Mattingly used high-quality fat (less than 2 percent fatty acid content) and low-quality, feed-grade fat (6 percent fatty acid content) obtained from Tyson Foods Inc. plants in Clarksville and Scranton. The high-quality fat is more expensive than the feed-grade fat, but both are less expensive than soybean oil. It took different steps to refine the different fats, but it could be done, Mattingly said. "The project demonstrated that there is a very fine line between facilitating an adequate reaction and generating so much soap that the biodiesel yield is diminished," Mattingly said. "Basically, deciding which method to use comes down to economics."
11/30/05 - Google Phonebook Lookup
 Find residential or business phone book listings using Google’s rphonebook and bphonebook operators. For example, query Joe Smith’s listing in Oakland like so: rphonebook: Joe Smith Oakland CA, or to get Sushi Samba’s number in NYC: bphonebook: Sushi Samba New York NY
11/30/05 - Lower Insulin levels with Alzheimer's progression, linked to tangles in brain
(Keely referred to using acoustics to untwist 'tangles' and 'knots' in the brain which prevented the flow of the neural force, see article link below. - JWD) Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School have discovered that insulin and its receptors drop significantly in the brain during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, and that levels decline progressively as the disease becomes more severe, leading to further evidence that Alzheimer's is a new type of diabetes. They also found that acetylcholine deficiency, a hallmark of the disease, is linked directly to the loss of insulin and insulin-like growth factor function in the brain. "We're able to show that insulin impairment happens early in the disease. We're able to show it's linked to major neurotransmitters responsible for cognition. We're able to show it's linked to poor energy metabolism, and it's linked to abnormalities that contribute to the tangles characteristic of advanced Alzheimer's disease. This work ties several concepts together, and demonstrates that Alzheimer's disease is quite possibly a Type 3 diabetes," de la Monte says.
11/30/05 - Keely on the Brain as a Resonator
 They (convolutions of the brain) are SIMPLY VIBROMETRIC RESONATORS, thoroughly SUBSERVIENT TO SYMPATHETIC ACOUSTIC IMPULSES given to them by their atomic sympathetic SURROUNDING MEDIA, all the sympathetic impulses that so entirely govern the physical in their many and perfect impulses (we are now discussing PURITY OF CONDITIONS) are NOT EMANATIONS properly INHERENT IN THEIR OWN COMPOSITION. They are ONLY MEDIA - THE ACOUSTIC MEDIA - for TRANSFERRING from their vibratory surroundings the CONDITIONS NECESSARY to the pure connective link for VITALIZING AND BRINGING INTO ACTION THE VARIED IMPULSES OF THE PHYSICAL. CERTAIN ORDERS OF ATTRACTIVE VIBRATION PRODUCE CERTAIN ORDERS OF STRUCTURE; thus the infinite variety of effects; more especially in the cerebral organs. The bar of iron or the mass of steel, have, in each, all the qualifications necessary, under certain vibratory impulses, to evolve all the conditions that govern that animal organism - the brain : and it is as possible TO DIFFERENTIATE THE MOLECULAR CONDITIONS of a mass of metal of any shape so as to produce what you may express as a CRAZY PIECE OF IRON OR A CRAZY PIECE OF STEEL ; or, vice versa, AN INTELLIGENT CONDITION IN THE SAME. Discordance in any mass is the RESULT OF DIFFERENTIATED GROUPS INDUCED BY *** ANTAGONISTIC CHORDS ***, and the flight or motion of such, when intensified by sound, are very tortuous and zigzag; but when free of this differentiation are in STRAIGHT LINES. TORTUOUS LINES DENOTE DISCORD, OR PAIN; STRAIGHT LINES DENOTE HARMONY, OR PLEASURE. There is good reason for believing that INSANITY IS SIMPLY A DIFFERENTIATION IN THE MASS-CHORDS OF THE CEREBRAL CONVOLUTIONS, which CREATES AN ANTAGONISTIC MOLECULAR BOMBARDMENT towards the neutral or attractive centres of such convolutions; which, in turn, produce a morbid irritation in the cortical sensory centres in the substance of ideation; accompanied, as a general thing, by sensory hallucinations, ushered in by subjective sensations; such as flashes of light and colour, or confused sounds and disagreeable odours, etc., etc. This unsuitable aggregation may be COMPARED TO A KNOT ON A VIOLIN STRING. As long as this knot remains, it is impossible to elicit, from its sympathetic surroundings, the condition which transfers pure concordance to its resonating body. Discordant conditions (i.e. differentiation of or knots in a mass) produce negatization (interference of intended actions) to coincident action. The normal brain is like a harp of many strings strung to perfect harmony. The transmitting conditions being perfect, are ready, at any impulse, to induce pure sympathetic assimilation. The different strings represent the different ventricles and convolutions. The differentiations of any one from its true setting is FATAL, TO A CERTAIN DEGREE (dependent on the degree of phase shift), to the harmony of the whole combination.
11/30/05 - Creativity linked to sexual success
Psychologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University in Britain found that professional artists and poets have about twice as many partners as other people. Their creativity seems to act like a sexual magnet. But Dr Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at Newcastle University's School of Biology, said it is a double-edge sword. "Poets and artists have more sexual partners but they also have high rates of depression," he told Reuters. Although creative people have long been associated with active sex lives, the researchers believe their study is the first to back it up with research.
They found that professional artists and poets had between 4 and 10 sexual partners, while less creative people had an average of three. "We found it in both the men and women which was quite a surprise to us," said Nettle, who reported the finding in the journal "The Proceedings of the Royal Society (B)." The study also showed that the average number of sexual partners increased as creative output went up. What the artists produce draws attention to them, which seems to enhance their sexual allure. "It could be that very creative types lead a bohemian lifestyle and tend to act more on sexual impulses and opportunities, often purely for experience's sake, than the average person would," said Nettle.
11/29/05 - Apollo veterans being recalled for new Moon Shot
 They are grayer, 35 years after the glory days, and their memories are not as keen. But the engineers who landed Americans on the moon are as enthralled as ever by the romance of space travel. And today some find themselves, to their delight, working once again to send humans to the lunar surface. Now in their 60s or older, veterans of the Apollo program have been called away from their tennis games, their grandchildren and their puttering to pursue President Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. Some are serving as part-time consultants to NASA Latest News about NASA or private companies. Others are working full time on the new moon program. All say the work is a joy, not a burden. No human footfall has stirred the moon's fine dust since 1972, when astronaut Eugene Cernan climbed back into his spaceship and declared that humans, "God willing ... shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." As in the Apollo program that went to the moon in the 1960s and '70s, the next moon vehicle will detach from its rocket to descend to the lunar surface. As in Apollo, the ship will be wingless, and parachutes will cushion its touchdown on Earth. "We tried hard initially to not make this new (effort) look like Apollo," says John Connolly, a leader of the NASA team that designed the new moon mission. But "we started coming to the realization more and more that the Apollo guys were pretty darned smart." So smart that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin invited a group of Apollo veterans to Washington several times to review NASA's findings. Griffin called them "the graybeards," says Robert Seamans, 87, who was NASA's deputy administrator for much of the moon program.
11/29/05 - Solar Energy costs differ
How much you'll pay in city fees to put solar panels on your home depends on where you live -- and some fees around Silicon Valley are so high they are placing a cloud over renewable energy, according to a new study. Saratoga, for example, charges $95 for a permit to install solar panels on a house. Yet in Los Gatos, two miles away, city planners will sock a homeowner with a $1,287 bill for a permit to install the same system. The findings come from a survey of 40 cities in San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Benito counties by the Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club. ``There's a huge gap in what various cities charge,'' said Carl Mills, a Milpitas technical writer who helped compile the survey. ``Something is very wrong.'' In addition to high fees, in some towns delays, red tape and bureaucratic hassles also are making it harder to go solar, the survey found. Sierra Club volunteers phoned 40 municipal building and planning departments over the summer and asked how much it would cost to install a typical solar-panel system on a house. They chose one that would cover 320 square feet, with the solar panels installed flush to the roof, generating 3 kilowatts, and costing $27,000.
11/29/05 - 140 ton Geothermal Heating System
 Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Library Storage annex is one of the largest geothermal energy projects in the state, thanks to a collaboration between the university and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation. The system consists of 80 vertical liquid-filled tubes, reaching more than 300 feet into the ground, using the earth's natural geothermal heat to warm the building in winter and changing the heat into cool air in the summer. Freitag said geothermal energy is the top of the line these days when one speaks about efficient and environmental heating and cooling systems. The best part of the project, he noted, is the roughly $21,000 SIUC should save each year to offset the initial higher costs of installing the system. "The efficiencies are so high over time the costs of the system just pay for themselves," Freitag said. Gatton estimated the university will recover costs from savings in a little less than five years. Eight geothermal system dealers exist in the Jackson and Williamson county area, officials said. Typical four- or five-ton systems can be installed in residential homes for roughly $1,000 per ton. "The systems tend to be pretty fool-proof, and not that much goes wrong with them," Freitag said. He has had a geothermal system in his home for the last five years.
11/29/05 - Nanotech the 'new asbestos'?
"Nanomania," one could call it -- the growing excitement and anxiety about super-small gadgets that might transform our world for better or worse. "However," Monica warns, "no industry -- including the nanotechnology industry -- is beyond the reach of American trial lawyers. Concerns about possible health and safety hazards posed by nanomaterials are being raised among labor unions and environmentalists; trial lawyers cannot be far behind. Some have even begun to compare nanotechnology to asbestos, a material plagued by $70 billion in litigation over the past three decades." The anxieties have grown since the 1990s, as an increasing number of lab researchers have reported evidence of certain nanomaterials' toxic effects on living organisms.
11/29/05 - GAO Says NASA Is Wasting Your Tax Dollars
 The Space Agency is wasting taxpayer dollars by the millions according to GAO reports and Congressional testimony. Not only that, but NASA has so far refused to respond to the reports and refused to give us an on-camera interview or to even answer written questions. According to Tom Schatz with Citizens Against Government Waste, "NASA seems to be an agency more interested in working on the achievements of the agency as opposed to managing their dollars." NASA's 2006 budget is in excess of $16 billion. The agency says it understands its fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer. But by any standard, the space program is wasting many, many millions of dollars. We tried to get NASA to talk to CBS 11. The agency refused, saying it would answer questions in writing. So, we submitted questions but again, NASA would not respond. And now, it has its eye on returning to the Moon and a manned mission to Mars. Schatz says that shouldn't be the focus. "Let's just get NASA in shape to do what it's doing now as opposed to expanding its mission into something that's far larger than anything they've done before."
11/29/05 - Creating a Vibrant Space Industry
One of the few things that everyone in the space industry can agree on is that there are many petty controversies in the space community. This is holding back the industry from having more demand, more political support, and more capital. The message was that if there is a clear choice in the market, “money flows,” but “confusion” causes the money to “stop flowing.” By stopping the confusion in the space industry, and ceasing our petty feuds, we can set the stage for capital to flow and new ideas to flower. The world is awash in capital. We have trillions of dollars of houses, cars, and businesses. The world’s productive capacity is growing all the time. We are figuring out how to build old things better so quickly, we have to find an ever-increasing pace of new items to produce. All the existing aerospace related firms and many others can prosper if demand and capitalization grow for space enterprise. Investors can be taught to like space again. When there are customers and demand, it should be very easy to teach the investors that the space industry is worthy of their dollars. As Monte Davis recently said on “The Space Show”, we have to set aside our petty differences. Shut up about Moon vs. Mars, hybrid vs. liquid, SSTO vs. TSTO, alt vs. biz, tourism vs. military, private vs. public, orbital vs. suborbital, robots vs. people, and asteroids vs. space invaders. Start subordinating our unimportant grousing about other’s companies and products to common goals. Start smoothing over our differences, agree to disagree, and push forward a positive message about our own and all competing products. Start teaching each other how to promote in a positive way and teach the media how to cover us in a positive way. The world is awash in capital. It can afford to devote a hundred billion dollars on developing space if it can merely be shown to have promise and if all the experts merely say it’s possible or remain silent. If there is less dissent, we will proceed to ascent.
11/29/05 - 'Psychic witness' helped police solve murder
 (Now THIS is a proof of power or gifts. - JWD) Lebanon County detectives thought they knew who killed Mark Arnold in 1993, but they didn't know where to find the perpetrator. Jan Helen McGee told them the killer was at a beach, probably Ocean City, Md., or Rehoboth Beach, Del. Detective Paul Zechman called the police departments there and, sure enough, they found Robert Wise living in Arnold's stolen car at a shopping mall near Rehoboth. Wise is serving a life sentence in state prison for the murder.
11/29/05 - AIDS tops 40 million worldwide
 UNAids tried to lighten the gloom by pointing to Kenya, Zimbabwe and some of the Caribbean countries, where there is some limited evidence that infection rates may be dropping slightly. But in the worst-hit regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa, the trend is steadily upwards and in India there are suggestions that the scale of infection could be worse than the official figures imply. At a press conference in Delhi, he said Asia, which contains half of humanity, was particularly at risk. China and Burma, which he said had the worst epidemics in Asia, were slow to acknowledge the scale of the problem. ``In the world's most populous nation, China, the overwhelming majority of the population does not know how the virus is transmitted.'' Only one million are so far on the drugs, while six million will soon die without them. Three million people died of Aids last year. The World Health Organisation, which set a target of three million on treatment by the end of this year, stressed that treatment is now essential to prevention work, because people will not be tested for HIV and therefore will not change their behaviour unless drugs are available.
11/29/05 - Storm damaged cars flood the market - be wary of great deals
 As the Gulf Coast region struggles to return some semblance of normality after Katrina’s battering, consumer advocates are raising a new alarm: Thousands of cars soaked by the hurricane are expected to enter the U.S. car market over the next few months and could be snapped up as bargains by unsuspecting buyers. Most of these so-called "storm cars" are usually sold for parts, but others make their way into the hands of dishonest people who try to fix them and pass them on to unwitting consumers in other states, or sometimes overseas, without disclosing that they have been damaged by flooding. Flood damage can lead to serious problems, including the malfunction of headlights, windshield wipers, brakes and even airbags, and so many insurance adjusters simply write off a vehicle if it has been flooded above its dashboard where most of its electronic components are housed.
11/29/05 - Introverted youth have deep roots for behavior
Introverted children enjoy the internal world of thoughts, feelings and fantasies, and there's a physiological reason for this. Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes. When these areas are activated, introverts are energized by retrieving long-term memories, problem solving, introspection, complex thinking and planning. Extroverts enjoy the external world of things, people and activities. They have more activity in brain areas involved in processing the sensory information we're bombarded with daily. Because extroverts have less internally generated brain activity, they search for more external stimuli to energize them. "It's the different pathways that are turned on that activate the behaviors and abilities we see in introverts and extroverts," says Marti Olsen Laney, a neuroscience researcher and author in Portland, Ore., who is credited with connecting introversion with its underlying biology. "It impacts all areas of their lives: how they process information, how they restore their energy, what they enjoy and how they communicate." Introverted children need time alone more than do extroverted children, says Laney, whose book, The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child, is due in January. "Extroverts gain energy by being out and about," but "being with people takes energy from introverts, and they need to get away to restore that energy." Laney says introverted kids also behave differently. They're not slow, inattentive or shy. Shyness is behavior that may diminish as children grow; introversion is a character trait that lasts.
11/29/05 - The Coming $100 Laptop Tragedy
 The earliest mistakes in any major project are typically the biggest mistakes.* Early decisions are important because of all the downstream resources and actions that they commit you to. Governments of various poor countries are expected to buy them for their young people. And therein lies the tragedy because governments are very poor at getting resources into the right hands. Imagine that you're a government bureaucrat tasked to buy, say, one million computers for young people in your country and to hand them out for free. How would you do so? You could do it by handing them out to every school kid -- but then you would be discriminating against the poorest kids, typically in the rural areas, because a disproportionately high number of them are not in school. You could hand them out to every child (assuming there are no more than one million children), but then you would be discriminating against young people who are just past their childhood. In short, you would have no good criterion for distributing them. Whose hands would you want them to end up in? In reality, two things will happen, one bad and one good. First, the bad outcome. As development economist Jeffrey Sachs used to recognize, poor countries tend to have governments with a lot of power. That's one main reason they remain poor. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in his classic cautionary book, The Road to Serfdom, in countries where governments have a lot of power, the worst tend to get on top. Thus, the powerful bureaucrat who is charged with distributing the computers is not likely to be a particularly ethical or caring person, as maintaining his power is more important to him than raising his people out of poverty. In fact, this bureaucrat is likely to give the computers to his friends or to others who are politically powerful. In many countries, he may even try to sell them. Which leads to the good thing. Whether this bureaucrat sells them or puts them in the hands of people who value the computers less than other people do, eventually the computers will tend to end up in the hands of those who value them most.
11/29/05 - Belief can produce physical results in healing
Medicines may actually work better if people believe they will. Research is now showing that the power of expectations can have physical, not just psychological, effects on your health.
Scientists are measuring the resulting changes in the brain, from the release of natural painkilling chemicals to alterations in how neurons fire. It's a new spin on the so-called placebo effect. Doctors have long thought it was psychological. But now scientists are amassing the first direct evidence that the placebo effect actually is physical. They say expecting benefit can trigger the same neurological pathways of healing as real medication does.
Columbia University neuroscientist Tor Wager says, "Your expectations can have profound impacts on your brain and your health."
11/28/05 - Hands on Science 'must teach experiments'
 In Nesta's survey of secondary school science teachers, 87% said learning which allowed more experiments and scientific enquiry would have a significant impact on performance. Almost two thirds said the biggest barrier to more scientific enquiry was lack of time within the curriculum. But many had also decided against an experiment because they thought safety regulations prohibited it. Nesta chief executive Jonathan Kestenbaum said: "In a highly technological society such as ours the ability of learners to enquire and analyse is increasingly important. "Scientific literacy now needs to take its place alongside general literacy and numeracy as a major part of the agenda to raise standards in schools." Practical projects bring concepts to life and make them relevant for students - for example a whodunnit investigation based on forensic science and a project to develop a robot which makes mechanical systems more engaging for students.
11/28/05 - Poor diet, inactivity make older people ill
Healthcare organisation Age Concern, which developed the report with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, estimates the minimum weekly cost of a healthy diet to be 32.20 pounds. But, the study found, those on lower incomes spent just 23.40 pounds. It also found more than 90 percent of those over 75 failed to take the amount of moderate exercise recommended to stay fit. The guidelines recommend 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five days a week. But the study found 21 percent of the people over 65 could not walk 200 metres without stopping or experiencing discomfort. The researchers said older people could exercise for as little as £2.10 a week. Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said: "While younger generations are increasingly encouraged to lead healthier lifestyles, the health needs of older people have been routinely overlooked."
11/28/05 - Flywheels Spin Clean Energy
 For temporary backup needs, flywheels replace batteries. Flywheels are spinning discs that store energy, and the companies planned to use them to recapture braking energy for hybrid cars. Mr. Pinkerton thought his magnetic bearings could reduce friction in the flywheels, increasing their energy efficiency. But then he stumbled upon another application. Flywheels could also be used to briefly generate power during an outage, bridging the critical gap before backup generators kick in. So fixated were the flywheel makers of the era on the untold billions that awaited them in the automotive industry, they discounted this less sexy market. Mr. Pinkerton didn’t. “They said it was boring, but right away, we realized we would like to go after that market. It was exciting because it was real.” Flywheels are essentially big discs that spin like tops, storing energy as motion. The basic principal is inertia, which is the same principal used in all gyroscopes-tops, potter’s wheels, and satellites. If a flywheel is constantly juiced with a small amount of electricity, it will spin. When the electricity is cut, the spinning slows and energy is drawn off. At those times, flywheels automatically turn into generators, feeding electricity back through the system. Most flywheel systems only provide about 15 seconds of power. But considering that 90 percent of all outages last for two seconds or less, that’s all you need, says Mr. Gunderson. In longer outages, it’s enough time to bridge to a generator. So flywheels are used for applications where it’s critical to avoid those few seconds of interruption, including hospitals, data centers, financial institutions, broadcasters, communication centers, airports, military installations, and semiconductor fabricators. Most flywheel customers are large power consumers that need at least 100 kilowatts of energy and have backup generators, says Ms. Saeed. Flywheels generally come in containers the size of water heaters or refrigerators, and can provide between 100 to 250 kilowatts of power. Beacon Power for flywheel backup systems.
11/28/05 - Emerging infectious diseases likely to worsen
The recent emergence of diseases, such as AIDS, SARS and avian flu, have catapulted emerging infectious diseases to the top of the medical and political agendas, and have highlighted the importance of wildlife as reservoirs or vectors for disease, writes Dr Andrew Cunningham. Of pathogens causing emerging infectious diseases, 75% are zoonotic (able to transmit from animals to humans), with wildlife being an increasingly important source. But why are we now seeing an apparently rapid increase in the emergence of new zoonoses from wildlife? One of the major drivers is closer human contact with wildlife, primarily caused by human encroachment into, and modification of, wildlife habitat. For example, Ebola virus outbreaks often are linked to hunting for "bushmeat" or to mining development, and the AIDS pandemic originated from human encroachment into African forests for food. The rise in international trade and travel is also important. The emergence of West Nile virus in North America, and AIDS and SARS globally, for example, arose from such travel and trade. This globalisation of people and products is difficult to control and is largely related to increasing air transportation. With world air travel expected to grow at about 5% a year for at least the next 20 years, the problem of emerging infectious diseases will continue to grow, he warns. Emerging infectious diseases are not only a problem for human health but are a major threat to animal welfare and to species conservation. Some emerging infectious diseases also threaten domesticated species.
11/28/05 - The Vatican and Aliens
 For those not up to speed on the Old Testament, this part of the creation story deals with a category of creatures called “the Nephilim”, a non-human race that apparently inhabited the Earth around the time Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Even in the 1950s, priests knew that aliens and the Church didn’t compute. If there were extraterrestrials out there, their existence could effectively herald the death of God - cutting the ground from beneath key biblical truths, not least of which is the claim that humankind was made in God’s image. Half a century on, the Catholic Church is finally getting round to asking what it would mean for their religion if humankind were to establish the existence of intelligent aliens. Were such creatures discovered, ought the Pope to consider ordaining an ET? And if the human race ever masters interstellar travel, should missionaries be sent into outer space? “Is original sin something that affected all intelligent beings?” he asks. “Is there a sort of ‘cosmic’ Adam predating even life on Earth? Is Jesus Christ’s redemptive sacrifice sufficient for the whole universe? Would there be a parallel history of salvation on other planets?” It is the devout who find the issue the most difficult to resolve. “They are the people who fear even thinking about science, as it might make them question their faith. But a faith that is afraid of the truth has no faith.” Part of his mission is to show the blinkered that even the most fantastical of scientific discoveries would, at least in his opinion, not trash the teachings of Christ and the prophets. “The discovery of extraterrestrial life will not destroy the Church,” insists Consolmagno. “What it might do is help us discard the bad ideas in religion - the narrow views, the hubris, the divisiveness.”
11/28/05 - 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities
There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the "best of the best."
11/28/05 - Rat-rods, cars with attitude
 Once disgraced, now embraced, rat rods are becoming one of the hottest trends among backyard mechanics since the tail fin. Also called the primer job, lowbuck, or rat-a-billy, rat rods are used cars with attitude. They are often Frankensteinian amalgams of old cars put together - the cheaper and dowdier, the better. Rat rods represent, in part, a populist revolt against the platinum-priced world of hot rodding. Its devotees are a tattooed and grease-under-the-nails subculture driven, in essence, not by status, but by dreams of "on the road" adventures and escape from the metronome monotonies of everyday life. Rat rodding is popular enough that it's even angering some of its upscale brethren: At hot rod shows, fans often look past the pretty but arguably soulless high-end machines to gawk at cars that haven't been painted since the Hoover administration. Experts say rat-rod enthusiasts now number perhaps 30,000 nationwide, and are boosting interest in America's unique but finite inventory of old cars. That attitude has morphed today into a punk-a-billy culture, in which old "ratty" cars help satisfy a longing for a time when life was more spontaneous - and dangerous. Unlike the ethos at the well-behaved hot-rod shows, where the Beach Boys eternally play and few people actually drive the cars, rat rodders like to go fast, in style, and perhaps not always to the letter of the law. Yet no matter what their state of inelegance, rat rods are meant to be looked at - whether with reverie or disgust - and driven. "Some of the rat rods have no paint, exposed wells, no floors, and are kind of unsafe," says Shane Thomas.
11/28/05 - A cautionary picture of water supplies as Earth warms
Mountain snows and alpine glaciers represent key reservoirs of fresh water for some 1.6 billion people worldwide. In 50 years, however, a warming planet is likely to disrupt many of these sources, leaving millions of people scrambling for additional supplies. The US West is not the only region of the world that relies on winter snows to water crops, generate electricity at hydroelectric dams, or fill soup pots. So a team led by Timothy Barnett at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography looked at other regions that rely on snowmelt for at least 50 percent of their water and lack the ability to store a year's worth of runoff. The principles involved are "exceedingly simple and uncontroversial," he says. "When it's warmer, you may have the same amount of precipitation, but more will be in the form of rain than snow. That's 'duh.' And if you have any snowpack in a warmer world, it's going to melt earlier." This can translate into less water in summer and fall. As for glaciers, "they are fossil water," Dr. Barnett says. "They may melt right up to the end, and you don't think you have a problem. Then, hey, they're gone." One of the areas the team sees as most crucial is the region whose thirst is slaked by glaciers in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush mountains. Collectively, these mountain ranges hold the third largest mass of ice after Antarctica and Greenland. The rivers they feed provide much of the water for 50 to 60 percent of the world's population. Yet China's latest survey of the mountains show that over the past 25 years, the glaciers are in wholesale retreat.
11/28/05 - 900 Million to 5.8 Billion - The Deal That Even Awed Them in Houston
 The buzz in Houston these days is over the $4.9 billion in profit that four elite private equity firms - the Texas Pacific Group, the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Hellman & Friedman - stand to make from selling an electricity company for $5.8 billion. Lured by deregulation of the electricity industry in Texas, the investors acquired the electricity company Texas Genco, which owns several power plants in the Houston area, just last year with $900 million in cash. Now, they are selling it to NRG Energy of Princeton, N.J., for a gain of $5 billion, a flip that will be one of the most lucrative private equity investments in recent memory. "This part of the deregulation process has transferred billions from ratepayers to investors," said Clarence L. Johnson, director of regulatory analysis at the Office of Public Utility Counsel, a state agency in Texas created to represent the interests of homeowners and small businesses on utility issues. "It seems extraordinary, doesn't it?" The investors profited largely by exploiting an obscure part of electricity deregulation here that pegs electricity prices to the price of natural gas. Because Texas Genco fuels some of its plants with relatively cheap coal and nuclear power, its operations become much more lucrative in times of high natural gas prices, like now.
11/28/05 - GM expects to sell more vehicles abroad than in US
(Interesting how some companies are being forced to find less demanding workforces or shut their doors. - JWD) Wagoner told The Detroit Free Press that he was surprised recently to learn from the automaker's marketing analyst, Paul Ballew, that GM likely will sell 4.5 million vehicles in the US and 4.6 million abroad this year. In 2004, GM sold 4.7 million cars and trucks in its home market and 4.3 million in other countries, according to the newspaper. In 2003, GM sold 20 percent more vehicles at home than abroad. Nonetheless, Wagoner said GM still must stem losses in its North American operations to reverse the company's slide. "Our fate is going to be determined in the next three to five years on getting this business in the US turned around and profitable," he was quoted as saying. Wagoner said he has concerns about the situation at bankrupt Delphi Corp., GM's former parts subsidiary where a showdown is looming with labor. But he said all three parties need to find a compromise that averts a catastrophe. "If we all act purely in our self-interest," he said of GM, Delphi and the United Auto Workers, "any one of the three of us could blow the place up. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy ... If everybody steps back and thinks about what we really need to do here, the possibility of coming to a reasonable agreement is much, much better than the possibility of the thing blowing up."
11/28/05 - Project Paperclip: Dark side of the Moon
 Sixty years ago the US hired Nazi scientists to lead pioneering projects, such as the race to conquer space. These men provided the US with cutting-edge technology which still leads the way today, but at a cost. The end of World War II saw an intense scramble for Nazi Germany's many technological secrets. The Allies vied to plunder as much equipment and expertise as possible from the rubble of the Thousand Year Reich for themselves, while preventing others from doing the same. The range of Germany's technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in 1945. Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories, even as Germany was losing the war. Thus began Project Paperclip, the US operation which saw von Braun and more than 700 others spirited out of Germany from under the noses of the US's allies. Its aim was simple: "To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union." Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18 November, the first Germans reached America.
11/28/05 - Marine renewable clean energy
It was a 5-year project to develop and test a commercially-sized marine current turbine. The turbine was installed in the summer of 2003 off Foreland Point, near Lynmouth on the North Devon coast of England, and has been successfully operated and tested sincethen.
the turbine is a 300 kW, horizontal-axis machine that resembles a 2-bladed wind turbine, but with the rotor underwater. The turbine is mounted on a steel pile fixed into a socket in the seabed, and the power train - the rotor, gearbox and generator - can be slid up and down the pile and out of the water for servicing.
11/27/05 - Brightening Nanotube Light Sources
 Nanotubes have proven to be very inefficient phosphors, absorbing a thousand photons for every photon that they emit (a ratio called quantum efficiency). Now, however, the latest research into nanotube luminescence has found that there is substantial room for increasing the efficiency of these infinitesimal light sources. "We were expecting to see individual differences of only a few percent, so we were very surprised to find that some nanotubes are a 1,000 percent more efficient than others," says Tobias Hertel. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene family along with buckyballs, carbon molecules shaped like soccer balls. Nanotubes, which are also called buckytubes, are seamless cylinders made of carbon atoms and capped on at least one end with a buckyball hemisphere. Nanotubes come in two basic forms: single-walled and multi-walled, which have two or more concentric shells. Slight differences in the geometric arrangement of carbon atoms produces nanotubes with different electrical properties, either metallic or semiconductor. Semiconducting nanotubes are the variety that produces light. Since nanotubes were discovered in 1991, scientists have determined that they are relatively easy to make and have developed several methods for doing so. The original process that was used is called the arc-discharge technique. Large amounts of current are passed through two graphite rods in a container filled with high-pressure helium gas. As the rods are brought together, an electrical arc is formed and the carbon in the smaller rod is transformed into a tubular structure filled with nanotubes. This produces a mixture of different types of nanotubes, including single-walled and multiple walled, semiconductor and metallic varieties in the form of black, sooty powder. A more recent process uses a laser to vaporize carbon by scanning repeated across a flat slab made from a mixture of graphite and metal. This approach is noted for its ability to make a large proportion of single-walled tubes. In addition, a chemical vapor deposition process has been developed that is most suitable for producing nanotubes in commercial quantities. Nanotubes are not known to be toxic to living cells, unlike the cadmium found in quantum dots. They produce a narrower, more precise beam of light, which makes them easier to detect. Finally, they are more stable and continue producing light long after quantum dots have faded.
11/27/05 - German Flying Saucers
 (Jim L. sent an email about a recent documentary on the History Channel about UFOs, German flying machines and said it had about 5 minutes of footage of Victor Schauberger, so I found this interesting site. - JWD) What I found through FOIA documents, BIOS Reports, the record of the 415th NFS, US Army and USAAF/USAF Technical Intelligence Manuals from 1945-47, as well as eyewitness accounts and postwar disc developments by AVRO Canada, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, and NASA helped sort out the mistakes and I believe I corrected them all. Solid evidence exists for the Sack A.S.6, Schauberger Repulsin discoid motors, Focke's Schnellflugzeug patent/project, the mystery V-7 (Miethe Elektrische Luft Turbine, under the Bruno Schwenteit postwar patent), Coanda's Lenticular design, Josef Andreas Epp's Omega Diskus 1/10th scale models as well as his GDR Pirna disc of 1950, Schriever's Flugkreisel, and the BMW Prague facility Flugelrad jet auto-gyros. The problem most people have is with the SS Technical Branch E-IV and their occult disc programs that date way back to 1922 with the occult Thule and Vril Gesellschafts. Speer, however, in his book "Infiltration" tells of his denial of access to SS war production, materials accumulated, direction of slave work force for weapon construction, and active projects.
11/27/05 - Cheaper Veggie Diesel May Change the Way We Drive
Japanese scientists may have found a cheaper and more efficient way to produce "biodiesel." The renewable, vegetable oil-based fuel can be used in conventional diesel engines, which are found in about 2 percent of cars currently sold in the U.S. and in about 40 percent in Europe. Any vegetable oil can become fuel, but not until its fatty acids are converted to chemical compounds known as esters. Currently the acids used to convert the fatty acids are prohibitively expensive. Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap. "We estimate the cost of the catalyst to be one-tenth to one-fiftieth that of conventional catalysts," Hara said. Though it has been historically limited, U.S. interest in the fuel appears to be rising rapidly. "We are anticipating 75 million gallons [284 million liters] of production in 2005, and that's triple last year's production," said Jenna Higgins, a spokesperson for the National Biodiesel Board, a biodiesel-industry trade group.
11/27/05 - Sleeping In A Horizontal Position May Be Bad For You
 Plants actually use gravity for their growth, rather than just overcoming it. Gravity provides the driving force for a two-way elevator formed by separate liquid columns, where the downward flowing side carries a concentrated and therefore heavier form of the lighter ascending liquid. Evaporation does the trick, concentrating the mineral content of the sap by getting rid of the pure H2O while keeping the minerals. The heavy descending liquid and the ascending new sap form a loop where water molecules, in what is described as a rubber-band effect, are able to lift the ascending column by negative pressure at the top. A first set of observations about sleeping in a slightly inclined position (head up, feet down, five degrees) rather than in our traditional perfectly horizontal beds, seems to confirm that the human organism requires gravitational pull to function in an optimal manner. Positive health effects were observed for those sleeping in the inclined position. Start at a six inch incline until you are comfortable with the changes, then go for the full 8 inch incline. Complete spinal cord injuries dating back as much as 18 years can be reversed to some degree by simply tilting a bed and altering the posture while seated! My discovery is in how gravity drives the cerebrospinal fluid, in a simple flow and return system, inducing some nerve regeneration, and also appears to facilitate effective guidance to regenerating nerves, much the same as how gravity induces and guides direction to seedlings This is achieved by altering posture to make use of gravity and can repair a significant amount of the damage in complete / incomplete spinal cord injuries. However, this does not solely relate to spinal function and a vast amount of other benefits have been reported, namely restored bowel and bladder function, increased metabolism, reductions in infections, visual improvements and in particular addresses the problem of urinary infections by assisting the renal function, muscular atrophy, and osteoporosis have responded well to this intervention. A general decrease in pain has been noted by some people that have already taken part in the pilot study. However, during nerve regeneration / redirection, people have reported a temporary increase in pain. Spasm and general muscle tension is improved significantly also. One of the first things you should notice is an improvement in body temperature. Instead of cold hands and feet, you will find that you have nice warm hands and warm feet. Goose bumps occur, finger / toe nails and hair grows more profusely. Toe nails, when they are in poor condition, have been reported to shed and a new nail grows which is stronger and smoother than the old nails that have been lost in two cases.
11/27/05 - 200mpg Pogue carburetor plans found?
 A retired Cornish mechanic has enlisted the help of the University of Plymouth to rebuild Pogue’s revolutionary carburetor, known as the Winnipeg, from blueprints he found hidden beneath a sheet of plywood in the box. The controversial plans once caused panic among oil companies and rocked the Toronto Stock Exchange when tests carried out on the carburetor in the 1930s proved that it worked. Patrick Davies, 72, from St Austell, had owned the tool box for 40 years but only recently decided to clean it out. As well as drawings of the carburetor, the envelope contained two pages of plans, three test reports and six pages of notes written by Pogue. They included a report of a test that Pogue had done on his lawnmower, which showed that he had managed to make the engine run for seven days on a quart (just under a litre) of petrol. The documents also described how the machine worked by turning petrol into a vapour before it entered the cylinder chamber, reducing the amount of fuel needed for combustion. The announcement of Pogue’s invention caused enormous excitement in the American motor industry in 1933, when he drove 200 miles on one gallon of fuel in a Ford V8. However, the Winnipeg was never manufactured commercially and after 1936 it disappeared altogether amid allegations of a political cover-up. Though we have no report of how fast Pogue drove the 8 cylinder car over the 200 mile distance using just one gallon of gasoline, it did not stop one critic/skeptic from suggesting, “You can get fantastic mileage if you’re prepared to de-rate the vehicle to a point where, for example, it might take you ten minutes to accelerate from 0 to 30 miles an hour.” In a search for KeelyNet news details, we find the 1935 Patent # 1,997,497 - In carburetors as commonly used for supplying a combustible mixture of air and liquid fuel to internal combustion engines a relatively large amount of the atomised liquid fuel is not vaporized and enters the engine cylinder more or less in the form of microscopic droplets. When such a charge is 'fired' in the engine cylinder only that portion of the liquid fuel which has been converted into the vaporous and consequently the molecular state, combines with the air to give an explosive mixture. The remaining portion of the liquid fuel which is drawn into the engine cylinders and remains in the form of small droplets does not explode and thereby impart power to the engine, but burns with a flame and raises the temperature of the engine above that at which the engine operates most efficiently, i.e., from 160-180 degrees F..
11/27/05 - Maxell offers 1.6 terrabyte holographic storage in late 2006
It'll be using technology from Bell Labs spin-off InPhase Technologies that's said to be able to achieve 1.6TB per disk uncompressed capacity with 120MBps of bandwidth. TB - One TB (Terrabyte) of storage = 1000 GB (Gigabyte)
11/26/05 - Core Evidence That Humans Affect Climate Change
 An ice core about two miles long - the oldest frozen sample ever drilled from the underbelly of Antarctica - shows that at no time in the last 650,000 years have levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane been as high as they are today. The research, published in today's issue of the journal Science, describes the content of the greenhouse gases within the core and shows that carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years and levels of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, are 130% higher, said Thomas Stocker, a climate researcher at the University of Bern and senior member of the European team that wrote two papers based on the core. The work provides more evidence that human activity since the Industrial Revolution has significantly altered the planet's climate system, scientists said. Scientists are enthusiastic about the ice core because it includes about eight full glacial cycles. The Vostok sample had four. Glacial cycles occur roughly every 100,000 years and include long periods of cold, when ice ages occur, and brief, warm interglacial periods, such as the current one. The cycles are controlled by shakes, wobbles and tilts in the Earth's orbit around the sun that determine the amount of sunlight falling on and warming the planet. The work suggests that the next ice age is about 15,000 years away. "Anyone counting on an ice age to head off global warming, or hoping to justify human greenhouse-gas emissions as a useful attempt to head off the next ice age, will find no comfort in the ice-core record," Alley said.
11/26/05 - Microwave Water Heater
The tankless system uses microwave technology to heat water on demand, saving energy and providing an endless supply of hot water for residential and commercial usage. The technology is designed to eliminate the deadly Legionella Pneumophila, since water will not stagnate, as it does with conventional hot water heaters. Powered by electricity and unaffected by the volatile gas markets, the Vulcanus MK4 can heat water from 35 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit in seconds and can source multiple applications at once: showers, dishwasher, sink usages and more. The Vulcanus MK4 is the size of a stereo speaker with a sleek modern look, making it ideal for condos and apartments, while powerful enough to serve the needs of any size family.
11/26/05 - Propeller powered bike can go up to 85MPH!
 Standing outside on the street near his home, Brown ran his hands over the tangled mass of wires, metal and tubes that make up the twin engines that power his unique bicycle. Despite its awkward appearance, Brown said he figures his bike can make the long trek across country on just 30 gallons of gas. There are other powered bicycles, he said. But most are direct-drive, meaning the engine powers the wheel rather than the chain, as his does. He can still use the gear shift on the bike, saving fuel and engine wear. Other bikes rely on a single engine. He took two small engines and through a system of gears and a throttle mechanism, made them work together. That extends the life of the engine and boosts speed. "It's something that somebody's never tried before," he said. The trip will take him a while, he said - probably 15 to 20 days. The bike can only reach about 25 mph, he said. "There's a trade off here, speed for economy," he said. Brown knows the bike will run. He's put 200 miles on it already. The throttle acts like a cruise control, he said. By setting the engines at a constant speed, they run more efficiently. When terrain requires more or less power, he shifts gears in the same way as he would riding a pedal-powered bicycle. His adventures with propeller-driven vehicles began in 1980, while he was working on a go-cart. He was living in Minnesota at the time. Brown struggled with the gears, until someone suggested that he stick a propeller on the back. He did and continued working on his invention. By the time he had finished the vehicle, he could speed along at 85 mph.
11/26/05 - Keep science off web, says Royal Society
(How backwards is this? It is irrational logic claiming an exchange of knowledge with wider society is best via private print journals. - JWD) The Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, yesterday joined the debate about so-called open access to scientific research, warning that making research freely available on the internet as it is published in scientific journals could harm scientific debate. The Royal Society fears it could lead to the demise of journals published by not-for-profit societies, which put out about a third of all journals. "Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society," The Royal Society said. A spokesman for the Royal Society said: "We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?"
11/25/05 - Ford’s Easy Fuel System Takes The Guesswork Out Of Filling Up
 Gasoline and diesel fuel sold next to each other from look-alike pumps, often four to six in a row. Over 150,000 people a year put the wrong fuel into their vehicle and the figure is rising rapidly as diesel sales increase. But for anyone who accidentally fills their diesel-powered car with gasoline, it can be a €4,000-€5,000 ($4,700-$5,900) case of mistaken identity. Ford of Europe has now come up with a solution for the mis-fueling of cars, a problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people in Europe each year. It’s called Easy Fuel, and it is a simple device that prevents a gasoline nozzle from being inserted into a car with a diesel engine. "Ford’s intention is to isolate the danger of engine damage to all customers," said Ford Fuel Systems Engineer Stefan Buro. "With the Easy Fuel system, we have developed a method for error-free handling, especially for the coming generation of quietly running diesel engines, where the only things customers notice are good performance and excellent fuel economy." The Easy Fuel system, with a patented mis-fueling inhibitor, consists of a sealed filler pipe insert and fuel nozzle locator that guides the nozzle to the tank opening. The insert contains a mechanically operated diameter detector which only allows the larger diesel fuel nozzle to be inserted into the filler pipe, and locks out the thinner gasoline nozzles. The system will begin appearing on Ford vehicles within two years following final testing. Unlike a gasoline engine, which compresses a mixture of gasoline and air, diesel engines compress just air before diesel fuel is injected into the cylinder and the fuel is ignited. Pouring gasoline into a diesel engine can cause damage to the fuel pump, the high-pressure injection system, as well as other serious engine problems.
11/25/05 - Energy Demand Prompts Fresh Interest in Bio-Energy
Biomass gasification is the partial oxidation of solid organic material including wood, sewage sludge and hybrid crop species. The output of the process is a fuel suitable for combustion in turbines to produce heat and in some cases combined heat and electricty (known as co-generation). While the technology is well proven, it is not widely used in New Zealand due to the relatively low cost of fossil fuels, hydro and geothermal energy. “The most likely application of biomass gas will be in the forest industry, where there is an abundance of raw material in the form of forest trimmings and waste from sawmills and timber processing plants. It is also an ideal fuel for generating heat for drying timber. “Looking beyond the forestry industry there are opportunities to incorporate biomass gas in industrial energy parks to produce process heat for manufacturing and energy for refrigeration, or to supply thermal energy and electricity for small towns serving the forestry sector. “It could also be used for heat and power for schools, hospitals and other public buildings, as it is in North American and Europe. The beauty of biomass gas is that it comes from a waste product, is clean burning, produces zero carbon emissions and can be built where the energy is needed, rather than relying on an expensive distribution network. New Zealand has 1.8million hectares in pine plantations, providing a large source of woody biomass. The installed capacity of biomass energy plant throughout the larger wood processing sites in New Zealand is around 550MWth,yet there is no exclusive electricity generation using wood or forest residues.
11/25/05 - Charges of Congressional "Pork" Leveled at Solar Projects
 Earmarked solar projects are diverting critical research funds while congressional belt tightening is forcing a fight for limited federal resources. A curious and not altogether comfortable situation has emerged in the U.S. solar industry lately. In the past few weeks, Senators and State Representatives from across the U.S. have proudly trumpeted their successful efforts to secure funding for solar projects in their home districts through the use of Congressional earmarks, or line-items added to bills. While new solar projects throughout the U.S. may seem like a good thing, the solar industry's national representatives came out against such actions, characterizing the projects as "solar pork"; programs that are not really there to advance solar energy but rather a way for lawmakers to bring money to home districts while gaining some positive press.
11/25/05 - Localization of finger impacts using acoustic time-reversal process
Time reversal in acoustics is a very efficient solution to focus sound back to its source in a wide range of materials including reverberating media. It expresses the following properties: A wave still has the memory of its source location. The concept presented in this letter first consists in detecting the acoustic waves in solid objects generated by a slight finger knock. In a second step, the information related to the source location is extracted from a simulated time reversal experiment in the computer. Then, an action (turn on the light or a compact disk player, for example) is associated with each location. Thus, the whole system transforms solid objects into interactive interfaces. Compared to the existing acoustic techniques, it presents the great advantage of being simple and easily applicable to inhomogeneous objects whatever their shapes. The number of possible touch locations at the surface of objects is shown to be directly related to the mean wavelength of the detected acoustic wave. An acoustics sensor and analyzer that localizes finger impacts on a surface and maps them to computer commands. The system taps time-reversal acoustics to analyze reverberations within a solid object in order to trace a sound back to its point of origin. The system works with rigid materials like glass, metal, hard plastics and ceramics, and can work with irregularly-shaped objects. The system is made up of a single acoustic receiver and a personal computer, and can identify contact points as small as a square centimeter. The system can be used to turn a desk top into a computer keyboard, a coffee table into a remote control, and a spot on a wall into a light switch.
11/25/05 - New Spectrometry to detect Cancers and growth rate
 The method, known as “stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry,” can determine where a substance was produced by “weighing” various forms or isotopes of an element in the substance - such as the ratio of rare oxygen-18 to common oxygen-16. Additional uses of the method may result from a new study that challenges the long-held belief that water moves so rapidly through cell membranes and pores that the water inside cells is chemically identical to the water outside cells. Prevailing wisdom says that water inside and outside of cells is identical in terms of ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16, and rare hydrogen-2 to common hydrogen-1. The researchers found that up to 70 percent of the water inside rapidly growing bacterial cells was generated by metabolism, the process of converting food into energy and other necessities of life. That conclusion was based on their surprising discovery that water inside the bacterial cells (intracellular water) has a different oxygen-18-to-oxygen-16 ratio than water outside the cells (extracellular water). The difference in isotope ratios in water inside and outside a cancer cell “could be useful in developing a test to assess the metabolic rate of a tumor - how fast the tumor is growing,” says Hegg. “This could be especially important in tumors in which obtaining a biopsy is difficult.” If doctors can do a biopsy to remove a sample of a tumor, the cancer cells can be cultured in a dish to determine how rapidly they grow. “But if you can’t biopsy it because it’s in your brain or another hard-to-reach location, then you need some other way to figure out how fast it’s growing,” Hegg says. Such a test would involve taking a blood sample to collect some metabolite produced by the cancer cells. “If that metabolite has the same isotope ratio as the water in your bloodstream, then the tumor is not growing so rapidly,” says Hegg. “However, if the isotope ratio in the metabolite is vastly different than the ratio in your body water, it indicates the tumor is growing very rapidly, so it needs to be treated more aggressively.”
11/25/05 - Water Vapor May Be Biggest Contributor to Higher Global Temperatures
An unexpected greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- may be the biggest factor contributing to higher global air temperatures, a Swiss researcher said Wednesday. Other greenhouse gases heat the ground, which causes more water evaporation that in turn further increases ground and then air temperatures, said Rolf Philipona of the World Radiation Center in Davos, Switzerland. "Water vapor is a greenhouse gas," said Philipona. "Wherever you have an increase in water vapor, you have an increase in temperature."
A study led by Philipona found that temperatures in the Alps increased by 1.3 to 1.4 degrees Celsius since 1980, but rose much more rapidly after 1995 -- jumping up almost a full degree at the same time that water vapor levels there rose by relatively high 4 percent. "There has been a lot of speculation over why temperatures go up," Philipona said in a telephone interview. "In this study, we were able to distinguish between the effects of water vapor and the effects of aerosols and other factors." Over the same period of time, temperatures in relatively arid Spain hardly rose at all because the dry landscape did not release a significant amount of water vapor, Philipona said. Most water vapor in the air occurs naturally, but humans can help restrict the problem by limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which heat the earth's surface and cause greater water evaporation, he said. "We cannot reduce water vapor, but we can enhance it marginally," Philipona said. "We have to strongly reduce the CO2 which we put into the atmosphere." Previously, global warming skeptics have claimed that rising surface temperatures would cause a lack of water vapor, potentially cooling the planet. "We are the first to measure the water vapor feedback and its effect on temperatures," Philipona said.
11/25/05 - eTV - Local kid aims at knocking out obesity with invention
 ntroducing exercise television or E-TV! The creator of this invention, ten year old Nick Nordlund of Glastonbury, wants to single handedly solve the problem of adult obesity. "America is the fattest country on the planet earth," says Nick. "I wanted to make something that you can have entertainment and exercise at the same time. You have to exercise in order to watch tv." This all started when Nick broke his mother's treadmill. He saw it had a DC or Direct Current motor and his wheels began to turn. He pedaled the bike to make the motor run and hooked it up to a DC television. "Maybe someone will make something like this, and get it patented and start selling it and maybe stop obesity," says Nick.
11/25/05 - Seagate denies hard drive to be replaced by flash memory
World hard drive leader Seagate is going to produce 2048GB hard drives next January in Singapore, a strategy to compete with flash memory chip, which has been regarded to take the place of hard drives. Samsung Electronics Co. holds that hard drive era is going to die out after the company unveiled 16 GB flash memory chips in September this year. Flash memory chip lags far behind hard drive both in properties and capacity. An ordinary hard drive has a storage of hundred of GBs while flash memory only has several GBs, said general manager of Seagate China. The manager also said that the two kinds of storage devices can be complementary, flash memory is more suitable for handheld devices like MP3, while hard drive is more adequate for digital TV sets and mobile phones.
11/25/05 - US Patent Office Co-Sponsors Invention Contest
 The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced in a Tuesday press release that it is joining the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the History Channel in sponsoring the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge. This is a new contest that invites the everyday inventors to share their vision and ingenious design with the world. Twenty-five semi-finalists will have the opportunity to be recognized, have their invention exhibited and receive valuable information to help them realize the full potential of their invention. The most remarkable invention submitted will be named the 2006 “Modern Marvel of the Year.” The inventor will win $25,000 and be featured on the History Channel during a special Invention Week of Modern Marvels programs. The deadline for entry is December 31, 2005.
11/25/05 - Zinc good for children with HIV
Zinc supplements are a safe and effective way to reduce illness in children with HIV, US researchers say. Evidence shows that they cut the chance of diarrhoea and pneumonia without any risk of worsening the HIV infection, according to a report in The Lancet.
They recruited 96 children, aged between 6 months and five years, from Grey's Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and randomly assigned the children to receive zinc supplements or a dummy drug each day for six months. The zinc supplements did not result in an increase in blood HIV viral load - a measure of HIV severity - but the children receiving zinc did have less diarrhoea. "More than half these children die before the age of three years, most commonly of respiratory tract infections and diarrhoeal diseases. "Zinc supplementation could be a simple and cost-effective intervention to reduce morbidity and mortality in children with HIV-1 infection." A spokeswoman from the HIV/Aids charity AVERT said: "The findings of this trial are certainly encouraging, as diarrhoea can be a life threatening illness in HIV positive children." People with a healthy, balanced diet should not normally be deficient in zinc. Foods rich in zinc include fish, meat, cheese, some nuts and seeds and brown rice.
11/24/05 - Chiller Additives May Save Energy For Cooling Big Buildings
 A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researcher has come up with a method designed to improve the energy efficiency of water chillers that cool the nation's large commercial buildings. The NIST method, if confirmed through experiments with full-scale chiller systems, could save as much as 1 percent of the 320 billion kWh of electricity used annually by chillers or an equivalent 920,000 barrels of oil a day, according to Mark Kedzierski, the NIST mechanical engineer who developed the technique. The researchers discovered that some lubricants, when injected in small amounts, can significantly enhance evaporator heat transfer, increasing the efficiency of chillers. When they studied the process more closely they found the most efficient heat transfer occurred when the added oil's surface tension, viscosity, composition and chemical characteristics complemented those of the chiller's base lubricant.
In a recent paper* describing the method, Kedzierski describes how the right additive forms a very thin covering on an evaporator surface, which produces enhanced bubbling during boiling. The improved conversion of the refrigerant molecules into vapor molecules increases the chiller's cooling capacity similar to a heat pump.
11/24/05 - New process for Recycling Tires
The innovative process, known as Molectra, reclaims all of the components that make up a tyre cleanly and efficiently without waste, residue, or emissions whilst extracting various products for re-use. The process recycles one hundred percent of the tyre. The Molectra process integrates mechanical, chemical and microwave treatments to cleanly and efficiently break the tyre down into its base materials - oil, carbon, rubber granules, steel and plastic fibres, which can then be made into valuable products and resources. An extensive list of products made from the processed tires is described at the above URL.
11/24/05 - New Florida Invention non-invasively zaps Cancer with radio waves
 More than 1.3 million people will get cancer this year, and 570,000 will die from it. John Kanzius and his wife, Marianne, retired to Sanibel Island in 2002, but any thoughts of a relaxing retirement were postponed six months later, when Kanzius was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. "I began one night trying to see if I could transmit high energy waves through a short space," he said. Kanzius told his friend, Dr. Robert McDonald, of Southwest Florida Regional Medical center, about cutting up his wife's pie pans to help send radio waves from point "A" to point "B." "He said he was able to cook hot dogs using this, and I was blown away," said McDonald. Kanzius continued to fine tune his work to see if the radio waves could be targeted to attack specific cells. Kanzius discovered that neighboring cells were unaffected. He now now holds seven patents on his technology. In recent months, Kanzius' work has gotten the attention of some very important researchers who believe he's on to something big. "Current radio frequency treatment require literally sticking a needle or needles into tumors and turning on an electrical current that will heat the tumor slowly," said Curley. "First, it's external and non-invasive -- no needles placed in the tumor or the body. Second, it would allow us to treat tumors much more rapidly than current equipment allows us to use," he said. "The ability to non-invasively treatment somebody is truly the holy grail of cancer." "To think that two to three years from now, I might be able to watch somebody that's been treated and have a doctor say to that person, 'You've been cured' -- that would be all I'm looking for," said Kanzius. The team at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center should have some preliminary data on Kanzius' work within the next few weeks. As for his own health, Kanzius says his cancer is in remission.
11/24/05 - Ignoring useless information aids memory: study
Filtering out useless information can help people increase their capacity to remember what is really important, researchers said on Wednesday. Scientists at the University of Oregon in the United States have demonstrated that awareness, or visual working memory, does not depend on extra storage space in the brain but on an ability to ignore what is irrelevant. Vogel and his team believe the results could lead to better ways to enhance memory and improve the diagnosis and treatment of cognitive problems such as attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia.
11/24/05 - NASA says Private enterprise needed in space
 (What a sneaky way to maintain oversight/control of private ventures, partner up with them! - JWD) NASA has said commercial investment will prove vital to its future efforts in space exploration. Ex-staffers backed the sentiment, saying NASA has too much on its plate to go it alone. The agency's chief administrator Michael Griffin told the American Astronautics Society that private investment in space could be the "dawn of the true space age", Space.com reports. He called on American industry to get involved in developing commercial cargo and crew ships, as well as putting private fuelling stations in low Earth orbit to help with the bid to get manned missions back to the Moon and to Mars. "We want to be able to buy these services from American industry. It will not be government business as usual," he said. Former NASA chief of staff Courtney Stadd said that the agency should not confine itself to working with US partners, but should look to international contractors and partnerships as well. He noted: "Any misstep in human spaceflight could spell a very long hiatus in human-driven exploration in the US." In related news, the House and the Senate have just approved NASA's 2006 spending plan, granting the agency $16.5bn - 0.7 percent of the federal budget - for the next fiscal year.
11/24/05 - Cosmic rays still an enigma, for now
Cosmic rays, the highest-energy particles in the universe, are being pitched at Earth from someplace beyond our galaxy. For more than seven decades, no one has been able to figure out where they are coming from. Now, armed with a cosmic-ray catcher's mitt inaugurated last week in Argentina on a site half the size of Rhode Island, scientists from the University of Chicago and Fermilab, along with more than 250 other scientists from 16 countries, hope to solve one of astronomy's biggest mysteries. Cosmic rays are so powerful that when they collide with air molecules in Earth's atmosphere, they can temporarily produce energies similar to those that existed right after the big bang, the explosive beginning of the universe about 13 billion years ago. "We want to understand how nature reaches these energies," said University of Chicago astrophysicist Angela Olinto. "The energies of the particles that we'll be observing with this detector are millions of times more powerful than we can produce with particle accelerators on Earth. In principle these particles will give us the possibility of testing physics that we can't test in our laboratories." Cosmic rays are protons accelerated to speeds approaching that of light, 186,000 miles per second.
11/24/05 - Patent enforcement: What you don't know might hurt you
(This is precisly why the patent office needs to REQUIRE WORKING HARDWARE for hardware related ideas or processes. - JWD) There is a growing group of entities that consider enforcing patents to be a main or significant source of revenue. As a consequence, more and more businesses have to be concerned with patent matters. In the past, most patent lawsuits involved competitors, each making and selling products containing proprietary technology into the same market suing each other. But patent enforcers often sue retailers or end users of products or technologies, not the manufacturers. In addition, patent enforcers often do nothing other than buy or otherwise procure patents. So, the classic scenario has changed. Patent owners are suing purchasers rather than manufacturers or direct competitors. Even when they are fortunate to enjoy warranties or indemnities, end users and retailers may still have to spend time and money to defend themselves against or settle patent infringement claims. The U.S. and many foreign countries do not require an inventor to actually build or implement his or her invention. An inventor need only create a design. Patents issued on designs are sometimes referred to as “paper patents,” because the inventor never builds a prototype before filing the patent application and may never actually build a product or implement a process embodying the invention. In some cases, the inventor may not have any intent to sell products or services that implement the patented technology. As a consequence, the issuance of paper patents can lead to situations where inventors invent patents rather than patent inventions. The patent statute states that “[e]xcept as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention … infringes the patent.” There is no requirement that the patent owner make or provide a product or service embodying the invention. Nor is there any requirement that the infringer make the infringing device. In simple terms, a plaintiff must prove just two things: ownership of the asserted patent and that the accused device or process (regardless of who made or designed it) is covered by at least one claim in the patent.
11/24/05 - New Technology To Reduce Office Lighting Energy Consumption Up To 60%
A world-first technology that can reduce office and commercial lighting energy costs by 30 to 60 percent has taken a major step toward commercialization, Fifth Light Technology Ltd. and Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) announced today. "Fifth Light technology became interested in this field several years ago out of a belief that the key to better commercial lighting efficiency and energy savings lay in dimming, intelligent control systems and management protocols, rather than expensive electronic ballasts and light tubes," says Dr. Joseph Dableh, President, Fifth Light Technology Ltd. The technology utilizes a unique, patented controller system that, for the first time, allows fluorescent lighting systems using magnetic ballasts to be dimmed. The system allows for the individual, automated control of each lighting fixture in a building, in step with lighting needs and the time of day. Prior to Fifth Light's technology, fluorescent lights operated by magnetic ballasts - by far the most common type of office and commercial lighting installed worldwide, with more than one billion fixtures in North America alone - could not be adjusted. At a time of heightened concern over rising energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, ironically most commercial spaces are over-lit, with tenants generally preferring lower light levels than they currently experience. More than doubles the life of fluorescent bulbs and ballasts, reducing maintenance and capital costs. Works with existing or new magnetic ballasts, fixtures and bulbs. Qualifies for energy efficiency rebates offered by the federal government and some utilities. Lighting represents at least 30 percent - and more often greater than half -- of a building's electrical energy costs. With each Fifth Light dimmer saving an average 350 KWh of electricity per year, if the technology were installed in 200 office towers, it would replace the output of one large coal-fired generator or 80 percent of an average nuclear reactor.
11/24/05 - DayTracker keeps track of days
 (Hard to believe there is a market for this but it shows how simple devices will sell. - JWD) "Busy people, shift workers and many elderly can lose track of time. They can use the quick nudges this instrument provides to put the garbage out on time, to tune into a program they don’t want to miss, or to comfortably get ready for an event which needs preparation,” said Brophy. “The DayTracker is essentially a tool which helps people stay organized on a day-by-day basis within the week. They can tack adhesive notes on its wide rim face to alert themselves to special events,” said Brophy. The patented battery operated device automatically tells what day of the week it is and even roughly tells the time of day. It can be hung on a wall or placed on a coffee table. “If you are on medication, you might take an afternoon nap, then wake up thinking it’s the next day. The serious danger is that you could take next day’s prescription (shown by your pill box as not taken) thereby overdosing (double dosing).” Currently his device, manufactured in China, is being sold for $19.95 in Home Hardware stores in Sudbury and the Valley, at the Science North’s gift shop and at Guardian Health Care Pharmacy on Lasalle Blvd. Brophy is already selling units this past month and is optimistic his invention will be a hit.
11/24/05 - More evidence 'dark energy' is the aether/zpe push
Albert Einstein, who added a "cosmological constant" to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research published today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The enigmatic "dark energy" that drives the acceleration of the Universe behaves just like Einstein's cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), an international team of researchers in France and Toronto and Victoria in Canada, collaborating with large telescope observers in Oxford, Caltech and Berkeley. Their observations reveal that the dark energy behaves like Einstein's cosmological constant to a precision of 10%. The Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) aims to discover and examine 700 distant supernovae to map out the history of the expansion of the universe. The survey confirms earlier discoveries that the expansion of the universe proceeded more slowly in the past and is speeding up today, apparently driven by some unknown form of energy. Since scientists don't know much about this mysterious new form of energy, they call it "dark energy."
11/24/05 - Realtime walking in Virtual Reality
 Nurakhmed "Ray" Latypov and his older brother Nurulla, working together in Moscow, were seeking a way to enable a person to walk, run and even jump, crawl, dive or roll -- all while remaining safely in place. In physics terms, they wanted to create an endless moving plane. In 1996, Ray conceived of a lightweight sphere, big enough to hold a person inside and mounted on wheels that would allow it to rotate freely. No matter how the occupant moved or how quickly or in which direction, the sphere would rotate to accommodate the motion. "It is truly unique in its ability to provide full-body motion in an immersive experience, where you can affect and change things," said Alexey Palladin, chief executive of Redmond-based VirtuSphere Inc. (pronounced "virtue sphere"). The VirtuSphere is 8 1/2 feet in diameter and weighs less than 500 pounds. Made of latticed ABS plastic, so it can be seen and heard through, it sells for between $50,000 and $100,000, depending on the software shipped with it. The sphere rests on a base of 25 supporting wheels that pivot in every direction, and it cannot be knocked off that base from the inside, no matter how violent the occupant's motions. It breaks down into 32 small pieces, fits into a small car and can be assembled in four hours with a power screwdriver. The VirtuSphere is entered through a circular hatch, and most people acclimate to the motion within 20 minutes, chief test pilot Kaizen Taki said. Once the hatch is closed, the occupant dons a head-mounted display that projects an image onto a small screen in front of the eyes. It's connected wirelessly to a personal computer outside the sphere. Sensors under the sphere bring the horizon closer to the occupant with every step forward. If the occupant walks backward, the horizon recedes. Thanks to a key portion of the display made by VirtuSphere, if the occupant turns his head left, right, up or down, what he's seeing on the display shifts accordingly.
11/24/05 - The Global Warming 'Tipping Point' Scenario
Rising temperatures trigger a runaway melt of Greenland's ice sheet, raising sea levels and drowning Pacific islands and cities from New York to Tokyo. In Siberia, the permafrost thaws, releasing vast frozen stores of greenhouse gases that send temperatures even higher. In the tropics, the Amazon rainforest starts to die off because of a warmer, drier climate. Melting ice in Greenland could send a sudden flow of cool water into the North Atlantic, disrupting the giant current that pulls warm water northwards to create the Gulf Stream. This might shut down the warm current and could also make parts of Europe and North America sharply colder, despite an overall warming of the climate. Scenarios like this, and the uncertainty surrounding them, will provide a dramatic backdrop to a United Nations climate change meeting in Montreal, Canada, from November 28-December 9. Around 190 countries will debate how to expand a U.N.-led fight against global warming to include developing nations such as China and India and skeptic countries, led by the United States and Australia. Concerns about "tipping points" today focus on the Arctic. Experts say Greenland's 3,000 meter (9,800 ft) thick ice sheet, which has been melting at ever higher altitudes in summers in recent years, may be vulnerable to a runaway thaw. If the Greenland sheet melted entirely over the next few centuries, world sea levels would rise by about 7 meters (23 ft). Antarctica's far bigger ice cap is likely to be more resilient as the giant continent acts as a deep freeze. A melting of the Arctic "may happen very abruptly. It's one of the big unknowns and would be irreversible," said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.
11/23/05 - Home Energy From Honda
 Home Energy Station III provides heat and electricity for the house as well as fuel for a hydrogen-powered vehicle. The station uses natural gas as its base energy source and is designed to work in a home-based refuelling environment. It creates enough hydrogen to power a fuel cell vehicle for a day, while providing electricity for an average-sized household. "The third generation of Honda's Home Energy Station continues to push the limits with its innovative technology," says Honda R&D Americas Vice President Ben Knight, "The combination of home energy generation and home refuelling offers an attractive alternative to gasoline and takes us one step closer to a truly viable hydrogen-based transportation system."
11/23/05 - How soon we forget - hybrids losing the point
It seems the high-mileage, low-frills trend in hybrid automaking may prove shorter than a Hummer's trips between fill-ups. Newer hybrids are using the added boost from their gas-electric engines for more acceleration and power. But more mean equals less green. To attract drivers looking for large and luxurious vehicles, automakers such as Lexus and General Motors Corp. are building hybrids with the looks and size of regular cars. The focus on performance sacrifices the kind of jaw-dropping efficiency that got hybrids noticed in the first place. Environmentalists say automakers are squandering gas-scrimping technology that reduces air pollution as well as the nation's reliance on foreign oil. It's cheaper to modify an existing model than to build a new competitor to the Prius or Insight, and SUVs have more room for adding hybrid components than sedans, he said. Automakers say gas guzzlers have the most room for improvement. But some new hybrids barely get better mileage than their non-hybrid counterparts. Take the hybrid Chevrolet Silverado, which gets the same 19 miles per gallon on the highway as a regular Silverado. On city streets it gets 17 mpg, two mpg more than the non-hybrid.
11/23/05 - Ormat Commissions 20-Megawatt Geothermal Power Plant in Nevada
 The plant was commissioned only 8 months after Ground Breaking. Formerly known as the Galena 1 Project, the plant was renamed in honor of Governor Kenny Guinn’s late energy advisor Richard “Dick” Burdette Jr. The state of the art 20 MW Geothermal Power Plant is integrated into the existing Steamboat Geothermal Complex and brings the total output supplied from Steamboat to Sierra Pacific Power to 45 MW, which is sufficient to power 45,000 homes. It is an air-cooled binary power plant that re-injects 100% of all geothermal fluid produced, and consumes no water or chemicals. Contrary to wind power plants, it works continuously, providing base load power.
11/23/05 - Why $5 Gas Is Good for America
A few billion newly motorized citizens of BRIC - that's economist-speak for Brazil, Russia, India, and China - have turned up unexpectedly at the filling station, pushing prices sharply north. Rising oil prices are more than just an irritant or even an ominous nick out of the GDP. They're an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy - with no political strings attached. Indeed, every extra penny you pay at the pump is an incentive for some aspiring energy mogul to find another fuel. For the better part of a century, cheap oil has fatally undercut all comers, not to mention smothered high-minded campaigns for conservation, increased efficiency, and energy independence. But growing demand is outrunning the oil industry's carefully computed supply curves, bidding up long-term expectations for the price of energy. Corn, sugar, and soybean farmers hope rising prices can do what billions in subsidies and tax-funded research couldn't: make ethanol and biodiesel cost-effective. Smarter money is betting that using plant waste will prove more economical. These technologies join compressed natural gas, already widely used where it's worth spending extra money for cleaner exhaust.
11/23/05 - Rocking coil to tap wave power
 The idea of David Woodbridge is to use the rocking motion of the waves to generate electricity, came from looking at his son's Slinky toy back in 1972. After noticing how easily it transferred energy, he thought, why not use something like the Slinky as a coil that rocks? Almost any eighth-grader can tell you that spinning copper wires through a stable magnetic field makes electricity -- lots of electrons jumping off the magnetic field and zooming through a conductive metal. And since the ocean waves are already moving, why not cobble together a machine to harness that energy? The elder Woodbridge founded Aqua-Magnetics Inc., a small company that Tom now runs. It's a radical departure from most attempts at ocean-based electric generators, which try to use the force of the waves to turn a wheel. Professor Eric Thosteson of the Florida Institute of Technology and others say they've never heard of an idea like it.
11/23/05 - WWF says global warming already hurting people, business in Europe
"Snow disappearing in Scotland, fewer bees in Italy, crop losses in Spain, forests on the decline in Germany and sea levels rising off the coast of England are dangerous signs of climate change in Europe," WWF International said, saying the changes hurt the livelihoods of labourers like foresters and farmers, whose work depends on nature's predictability. Cassian Garbett, 45, of England said he is the last permanent resident in one of five coastguard cottages near the town of Seaford - a position that has allowed him to observe a rise in the sea level there. "What we've been experiencing in the past four to five years is that the sea is a very different animal." The sea defences that protect his home from flooding have broken four times since 1999, he said, and nobody in the region can remember them breaking before that. Giuseppe Miranti, 26, an Italian organic beekeeper, said warmer temperatures are making flowers bloom outside their regular season, which changes the behaviour of his bees.
11/23/05 - Clean Power, Drinkable Water
 Waves, tides even undersea currents can, in principle, be tapped to generate electricity; the technology is in transition from real-world experiments to early adoption, and the preliminary signs are that the systems can indeed produce usable amounts of power at competitive prices. Most desalination installations use electricity to create the pressure needed to drive a reverse osmosis system but the two Sydney-based, privately owned companies' combined technologies use wave pressure directly to power a reverse osmosis desalination plant. This unusual project avoids the multiple energy losses in converting wave energy to electricity before using the electricity to drive pressure pumps. "The main expense with desalination is building up the pressure needed to force the water through the separation membranes," says David Murdoch, managing director of H2AU. "With normal water desalination, that pressure energy is lost but our systems incorporate energy recovery technology, which allows us to transfer most of the pressure from the outgoing brine to the incoming seawater." The Port Kembla test system has met its initial goals, and is now gearing up for longer-term operation. Energetech estimates that it will produce at least 500 MWh annually -- possibly up to 1,500 MWh -- and about 2,000 liters of fresh water every day. At full production, an Energetech wave power system should produce electricity at a cost of less than five cents US per kilowatt-hour.
11/23/05 - One in Eight Email Messages Infected by Sober.Z Worm
Blocking Port 25 Will Assist in Stopping Mass-Mailing Worm Propagation. On Tuesday, Nov. 22, the MX Logic Threat Center had blocked over 1 million email messages infected with the latest variant of the prolific Sober worm, W32/Sober.Z -- or one in every eight emails. W32/Sober@MM!M681,WORM_SOBER.AG, Sober.Y, and W32/Sober-{X, Z}) is a mass-mailing worm spread through a .zip file attached to an email. Once the attachment is opened, the worm uses its own email engine to send itself to addresses harvested from the infected computer. Port 25 is an Internet gateway that is used for the sending of email traffic on the Internet |
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