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09/30/06 - The Shape of Song
What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see--literally--the shape of any composition available on the Web. The resulting images reflect the full range of musical forms, from the deep structure of Bach to the crystalline beauty of Philip Glass.09/30/06 - Researchers stress adaptation to global warming
Install massive steel barriers in the waters around New York City to ward off storm surges as sea levels rise. Plant heat-friendly corn instead of heat-sensitive wheat. Air-condition stifling apartments to prevent widespread heat-related deaths. Require new buildings to be set well back from the seashore or raised on stilts. These are some of the ideas that scientists and engineers are discussing to help the world adapt to climate change. No matter what efforts are made to slow global warming, even many skeptics say that further temperature increases are inevitable. As a result, adaptation - actions that individuals, companies or governments take to reduce damage from climate change - is gaining more attention from researchers and policymakers. Adaptation can include such measures as switching crops, building seawalls, controlling water use, adopting new building codes, even moving away from danger zones. As the United States gets hotter, people will try to move north, Gulledge predicted. "Unfortunately, all the good places are already taken," he said. As a result, "Canada will be more populous 500 years from now." Animals, plants and insects already are migrating toward cooler climes. Since 1975, 1,700 biological species have been moving poleward at an average speed of 25 miles per decade, James Hansen, a NASA environmental scientist, reported in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We have already bequeathed a more dangerous world to our grandchildren," Neil Adger, a climate expert at the University of East Anglia in England, wrote in his new book, "Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change." "Adaptation to climate change will be required from all of us, whether we want it or not."09/30/06 - Doctor claims time travel to heal
An Ohio chiropractor who claimed to treat patients using time travel has surrendered his license to practice. State regulators had been investigating Dr. James Burda of Athens, who said he could take care of anyone, anywhere by reaching back in time to when the injury occurred. Burda said he discovered the skill six years ago when he hurt his own foot while driving. He said he gave the pain a command to stop and it went away. He said he doesn't use force to realign bones, but he uses his mind to manipulate the body. But if that doesn't work, he said he travels back in time to fix the problem. He calls the practice Bala-Keem. State medical officials call it malpractice. Burda's Web site offered long-distance healing service for $60 an hour. Burda said that his practice is beyond chiropractic, and is beyond what "they understand." He said that anything that's beyond what people don't understand scares them.09/30/06 - Self Obsessed Boomers want more 'me' time
Every eight seconds, another baby boomer turns 60. And as the trendsetters of the generation head for retirement, they're yearning for their dream homes. More than a third said their adult children and their own parents are not a consideration in creating their dream homes. Sixty-three percent said enjoying their home after age 60 is a priority above or equal to spending time with the grandchildren, and just 35% said they'd relocate to be closer to family and loved ones. The generation has always been considered selfish," said Frank Anton, chief executive officer of Hanley Wood, a media and information company for the housing and construction industry. "This survey would indicate maybe they're more selfish than anyone knows." Respondents interviewed in the study weren't just any boomers. The study included 2,000 homeowners between the ages of 50 and 60 -- and with annual household incomes of $100,000 or more. The study's authors termed these individuals "Boomfluentials," the oldest, most educated and most affluent members of the generation.09/30/06 - 7 sites facing radical alteration due to climate change
1) Rainforests of Borneo - El Niño brings deadly droughts to the Kalimantan Timur province of Indonesia-East Borneo to the rest of us. / 2) Venice - Rising sea levels, accelerated by global warming, are forcing the Adriatic against the stones of the city, allowing saltwater to seep into brick walls and crumble them. / 3) Tuvalu - The low-lying islands of Tuvalu are under imminent threat from rising seas; New Zealand has agreed to accept migrants once our home becomes uninhabitable, which is expected to happen in less than 50 years. / 4) Vermont - Think about the winter-traditionally long here, full of skiers sliding across pastures and sleds flying down barnyard hills. The season is already about two weeks shorter on average than it was in 1970. / 5) Okavango Delta, Botswana - The only immediate threat to this unique place is the building of upstream dams, or a large offtake of water from the Okavango River and its tributaries. But a recent climate model predicts a significantly and consistently drier southern Africa. In the short term, this will result in an even denser concentration of megafauna here as the swamp retracts. / 6) Arctic - The permafrost is melting. Houses are in danger of being swept to sea. Winter roads are essential to bringing goods and allowing people to visit relatives in other communities; with delayed ice-forming and early spring break-up, it hits these people hard. / 7) Reefs of Fiji - When water heats up, corals expel the symbiotic algae that provides them with nutrients and color, leaving the corals "bleached." In Fiji, corals can survive in waters up to about 30°C (86°F). Above that, the corals will die if the temperature stays elevated for long enough. Much of the coral Fiji is famous for has died, fish have disappeared, and the once stunning reef at Beqa became a sad desert. Thankfully, not everything died off and I could see little bits of live coral and some persistent fish.09/30/06 - 10 of the The Stupidest Things President George W. Bush Has Ever Said
2) "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 200409/30/06 - Mileage Saving Rules of Thumb put to the test
A lot of times on Daily Fuel Economy Tip, I write about various rules of thumb. For example: * For every extra 100 pounds you carry in your car, you decrease your gas mileage by up to 2% * For every 5 miles per hour you drive above 55 mph, you reduce your gas mileage by up to 10% * You save more gas by turning off and restarting your car than you do by idling for a minute. The list goes on and on. Well, it looks like someone has decided to put many of these rules of thumb to the test. By hooking up a laptop to his 2006 Jeep Wrangler, Matthew Vea was able to get a pretty good feel for how accurate many of these rules of thumb really are. I’d go into the details regarding how Vea actually collected the data but you can read the article for yourself (this is actually a nice way of me saying the technical stuff in his article is way over my head). Not surprisingly, Vea was able to confirm what you have read here many, many times - you can increase your vehicle’s gas mileage though: 1. Moderate acceleration 2. Watching your speed 3. Properly inflating your tires 4. Reducing excess weight 5. Reducing drag09/29/06 - Death by Medicine
Something is wrong when regulatory agencies pretend that vitamins are dangerous, yet ignore published statistics showing that government-sanctioned medicine is the real hazard. Until now, Life Extension could cite only isolated statistics to make its case about the dangers of conventional medicine. No one had ever analyzed and combined ALL of the published literature dealing with injuries and deaths caused by government-protected medicine. That has now changed. A group of researchers meticulously reviewed the statistical evidence and their findings are absolutely shocking.4 These researchers have authored a paper titled “Death by Medicine” that presents compelling evidence that today’s system frequently causes more harm than good. This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year. The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5) Something is wrong when regulatory agencies pretend that vitamins are dangerous, yet ignore published statistics showing that government-sanctioned medicine is the real hazard. We placed this article on our website to memorialize the failure of the American medical system. By exposing these gruesome statistics in painstaking detail, we provide a basis for competent and compassionate medical professionals to recognize the inadequacies of today’s system and at least attempt to institute meaningful reforms.09/29/06 - 1 Degree Celsius and we're done for
"Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know." So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback. Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen's team. Stuart Chapin of the University of Alaska Fairbanks this week reported that air temperatures in the Alaskan interior have risen by 2 °C since 1950, and permafrost temperatures have risen by 2.5 °C. In Siberia the warming is especially pronounced in winter. "It has caused the onset of spring to advance by as much as one day a year since satellite observations began in 1982," says Balzter. Similarly, Alaskan springs now arrive two weeks earlier than in 1950, according to Chapin. Melting permafrost in the boreal forests and further north in the Arctic tundra is also triggering the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from thick layers of thawing peat. If Hansen is right that the carbon and methane stored in the boreal regions has the potential to transform the world into "another planet", then the boreal region may be worth a great deal more than that.09/29/06 - Potentially massive savings from building automation
It's incredible how much electricity is consumed by the lighting in big office and industrial buildings, and even more incredible how much of it is unnecessary. A company like Encelium will go into a building and rig rooms with sensors and lighting fixtures with switches and dimmers that allow them to be remotely controlled, either through a pre-established program or through a Web interface. Savings range from 50 per cent to 70 per cent on electricity bills, and the payback can be as little as three or four years depending on the installation. Looked at this way, you begin to realize that the province would get the biggest payback in terms of conservation if it dumped money into building retrofits, or at the very least provided interest-free loans to retrofit projects that could repay the loan within five years. It's a no-brainer.
09/29/06 - How to write a White Paper as the new PR tool
The use of white papers as a marketing tool has skyrocketed in recent years, not only for selling information technology but also to promote various products and services beyond hardware and software. A professional writer or editor hired to produce the text for a white paper typically is not an expert in the subject, which more often than not is both technical and arcane. Before the Internet, the greatest challenge for the writer was lack of information. Research often was the bottleneck in devising a white paper. The local public library contained little usable information on the specialized topics, and subject matter experts often were uncooperative in sharing information with writers. In the Internet era, the problem is too much information. The writer’s challenge is not in finding sufficient content for writing the paper, but in selection. How do you know what content to include, or what to leave out? All you have to do is ask and answer one question: “What is the marketing objective of this white paper?” Importantly, topic and marketing objective are not the same thing. When you have a ton of information available on the topic, avoid taking the attitude that “the more content we can cram into our white paper, the better.” Your reader is busy. If your paper has the heft of “Moby Dick,” the reader will put it aside. The writer’s task is one of selectivity: knowing what to leave out is almost as important as knowing what to put in. What to leave out. To start, leave out information that the reader can get elsewhere easily and does not forward the marketing objective. The text should be as long as it takes to achieve the marketing objective. But as a rule of thumb, I find the most effective white papers to be 3,000 to 4,000 words. At 2,000 words or less, a paper doesn’t seem substantial enough, and perhaps is better suited to an article. Much beyond 5,000 words, the bulk becomes ponderous enough to scare off busy prospects who would at least skim the document if it seemed less imposing.09/29/06 - Brain Stim creates ghostly friend
Swiss doctors have been able to solve the mystery behind hallucinations while treating for epilepsy a 22-year-old female patient with no history of psychiatric problems. During the electrical stimulation to certain brain areas doctors touched a spot known as the left temporoparietal junction, which is responsible for coordination. Cosmos Magazine reports that when this happened the woman claimed that she saw a ghost who was mimicking her every movement. Though the feeling was artificially produced, she did not recognize the ghost as an illusion. According to the woman’s account when she would try to sit up or lean forward the “shadow person” copied her pose and embraced her in his arms - a feeling she described as “unpleasant.” The electrical stimulation repeatedly produces a feeling of the presence of another person in the patient’s extra-personal space. Blanke and colleagues concluded that the patient was experiencing a perception of her own body resulted from the corrupted data collection by the brain. Since the strange sensation of someone’s presence, an experience of one’s actions being performed by another and the perception of a different self appear to be the results of electrical brain stimulation, scientists are led to believe that their discovery might help shed light on brain processes that contribute to the symptoms of schizophrenia. They could also explain the origin of paranormal experiences such as ghost and UFO encounters.
09/29/06 - Creating innovations in sustainability
”I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others ... never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy.” -- Thomas Edison09/29/06 - Too Much Testosterone Kills Brain Cells
Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's. "Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study. Testosterone is key to the development, differentiation and growth of cells and is produced by both men and women, although men produce about 20 times more of the hormone. "We can show that when you have high levels of steroids, you have high testosterone and that can destroy the nerve cells. We know that when you lose brain cells you lose function." Ehrlich's team tried the same thing with the "female" hormone estrogen, just to be fair. "We were surprised, but it actually looks like estrogen is neuroprotective. If anything, there is less cell death in the presence of estrogen," she said. "Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don't get mad -- just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault," Ehrlich said in a statement. The cells die via a process called apoptosis, also known as cell suicide or programmed cell death.
09/29/06 - Powerful Batteries assemble themselves
Biology may be the key to producing light-weight, inexpensive, and high-performance batteries that could transform military uniforms into power sources and, eventually, improve electric and hybrid vehicles. Angela Belcher, an MIT professor of biological engineering and materials science, and two colleagues, materials science professor Yet-Ming Chiang and chemical engineering professor Paula Hammond, have engineered viruses to assemble battery components that can store three times as much energy as traditional materials by packing highly ordered materials into a very small space. Through a combination of genetic design and directed evolution, Belcher has created viruses that coat themselves with inorganic materials they wouldn't touch in nature, forming crystalline materials, which are doped at regular intervals with gold to enhance their conductivity. Then the coated viruses line up on top of a polymer sheet that serves as the electrolyte, to form one of the battery's electrodes (see "Virus-Assembled Batteries"). The device looks like a thin sheet of cellophane. Now Belcher is engineering viruses to assemble the second electrode, with the goal of creating an extremely compact, self-assembled battery.09/29/06 - Why We Need An X Prize for Eco-Friendly Air Travel
Air travel is frying the planet. While air travel contributes only 3% of humanity's total CO2 emissions (making them a problem only a few times larger than, say, coal fires), air travel is growing at an astounding rate. And while engines are growing more efficient, planes are also getting larger and flights more frequent, meaning that air travel may effectively undo many of the gains so far made in cutting CO2: Friends of the Earth commissioned a study from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to work out what growth of 6.4% a year (its average through the 1990s) would mean for Britain over the next 40-50 years. It concluded that the total CO2 discharges from air-traffic would soon offset all the reductions in carbon emissions scheduled under British government policies to comply with Kyoto. The European Commission (presumably neutral on such matters) accepts that, by 2012, the growth in aviation would offset more than a quarter of the reductions that its richer members hoped for. Furthermore, for a variety of reasons having to do with chemical emissions and contrail formation (the white "tails" jets leave behind them), it turns out that airplanes have a climate impact that's actually 2-4 times greater than their CO2 emissions alone would indicate.
09/29/06 - Dentin for Solar Collector Arrays
German scientists have used the photonic crystal structure of dentin as an inspiration to propose a new method of using sunlight to produce electricity. Andrei Sommer and Michael Gente of the University of Ulm say tooth structure bears similarities to photonic crystals, which allow certain wavelengths to enter their internal structure but block others. Applications of the effect might include harvesting sunlight for photovoltaic cells. The light-collector mechanism in dentin could serve as a model for the design of solar concentrator arrays, the researchers said. Arrays of tooth-like structures mounted on silicon permit collection of sunlight virtually independent of the angle of incidence of the sun, which could be vital, for instance, in Antarctica.09/29/06 - For Oil, China scours backwaters of the world
"Gou qiang," Ma said of the search for oil, using a Beijing slang term that literally means it will be chokingly difficult. "But we have no choice. This is something we have to do." As recently as 1992, China was self- sufficient in oil. Today, the world's most-populous country is importing 40 percent of its needs - a figure that will rise to 75 percent by 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy predicts. Chinese oil consumption has almost quadrupled to 7.4 million barrels a day, making China the No.2 consumer behind the United States, and already ahead of Japan. As demand soars, production at the biggest Chinese oil field, Daqing, is in decline. "There's no gentle way of saying this," said Han Wenke, deputy director of the Energy-Research Institute, an arm of the Chinese planning ministry that is based in Beijing. "We need to find oil fast." In its search, China is scouring the backwaters of the world, from monsoon-lashed Myanmar to the deserts of Iran to the seas off Sudan and North Korea, cutting deals with nations that the United States and many other countries consider pariahs. Around the globe, from Angola to Venezuela, China is locked in competition for oil resources with Western nations and another emerging giant, India. "I see China and the U.S. coming into conflict over energy in the years ahead," says Jin Riguang, a Chinese government oil and gas adviser and member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. China has no option but to deal with regimes that the United States disapproves of, says Guan Bin, an analyst at Merrill Lynch in Beijing. "China is a late comer to the oil exploration scene, and the choicest, most-productive areas have been taken by the BPs and Shells of this world," Guan said. To ensure that they get deals, Chinese companies have been paying premiums for the oil fields and companies they buy, said Jonathan Woetzel, a director at McKinsey in Shanghai. In Nigeria, Cnooc ended up paying $2.7 billion, 19 percent more than it had originally said it would, for an offshore block. "On average, the country's national oil companies pay at least 10 percent more for foreign reserves than major international oil companies do," Woetzel said.
09/29/06 - China Claims Successful Fusion Power Test
China claims to have carried out a successful test of its experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor. But what exactly made this test 'successful' is not clear. From the article: 'Xinhua cited the scientists as saying that deuterium and tritium atoms had been fused together at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for nearly three seconds. The report did not specify whether the device... had succeeded at producing more energy than it consumed, the main obstacle to making fusion commercially viable.'"09/29/06 - Cooperative Micro Air Vehicles for Surveillance
MIT researchers are using tricked-out model helicopters, each about the size of a seagull, to demonstrate swarming behavior in unmanned micro-air vehicles (drones). According to Aeronautics and Astronautics professor Jonathan How, they're focusing on techniques for "persistent surveillance." A group of drones could act as a distributed eye-in-the-sky for a military convoy with the vehicles taking turns landing on a truck for recharging in a docking station. From New Scientist: In the indoor tests, up to five radio-controlled helicopters are being used to collaboratively track small ground vehicles and land on the back of small moving platforms. A video shows one of the vehicles landing on a moving truck, while using a camera to lock onto the target and landing pad. In another experiment, each UAV was programmed to automatically land on a stationary recharging station when running low on battery power. Another video shows two aircraft working together to track a moving ground vehicle. The UAVs automatically take turns tracking the target at low altitude.
09/29/06 - Finger length tied to Athleticism
A new study suggests that the length ratio between women's second and fourth fingers is a good indicator of their sports ability. Researcher Tim Spector of St. Thomas' Hospital in London and his colleagues analyzed hand X-rays from more than 600 female twins who also provided information on their sports abilities. They report their results in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. From The Independent: The finding adds to evidence that the ratio between the two fingers - not the length itself but their length relative to each other - is associated with a number of different personality traits, which include sexuality, fertility, intelligence, aggressiveness and musical ability. The difference is believed to be linked to the level of the male hormone testosterone, to which the foetus is exposed in the womb. Scientists have suggested that the higher the level of testosterone, the more masculine the resulting foetus is likely to be, with its associated traits of strength, fertility and mathematical ability.09/28/06 - TeraWatt claims inertial kickback to produce usable force
The DSS System creates kinetic energy resulting from a permanent mechanical chain reaction. It requires energy to disturb and accelerate the original symmetry but it will equalize its inner stability and hereby accelerate itself on and on. During all times energy can be extracted on each element, as long as the tightening torque is lower than the precompressed tension in between each element. By the right amount of elements it is possible to extract more energy that is required to propel the system.
09/28/06 - Kundel voice coil Magnetic Motor
The Motor works the same as any other standard AC or DC motor, interaction between 3 magnets. The only difference is a typical motor oscillates electrical current to the electro-magnet causing rotation. The Kundel Motor uses the same principal, but instead of oscillating a current, it physically oscillates a permanent magnet (using a speaker voice coil). The magnets interaction is the same without electricity. It is essential to point out that all the rotational work / torque that the motor is producing comes only from the interaction between the two small reciprocating magnets (0.75" OD, 0.375" ID, 0.25" thick) and the three rotor magnets (45mm OD, 35mm ID, 8mm thick). Any reciprocating action will cause the rotor to rotate at the frequency of the reciprocation. This effect can also be used so that the motor operates as an actuator. By rotating the axle, the reciprocator will reciprocate in synchronization with the frequency of rotation. The magnets size, shape and strength does not matter -- the effect remains the same.
09/28/06 - the Brazilian Diesel Tree
The tropical trees, which have the botanic name copaifera langsdorfii, produce a biofuel that can be tapped, filtered and used to power machinery such as tractors. It is estimated a one hectare plantation could produce 12,000 litres of fuel a year - enough to make a small farm fuel self-sufficient. "He sourced the seed from Brazil and says the first seedlings would be available in late January. The recommended method of growing them is to plant 1,000 trees on a hectare of land, preferably in a tropical area, then test them for their vigour, growth and yield about three years later, which ordinarily would lead to culling about half of them. About four to six years later they would be measured again before culling them down to between 250 and 350 of the best trees, which would be inter-bred and harvested for seed. "Mr Jubow said a large mature tree would yield about 40 litres of diesel a year, which equated to about 12,000 litres per hectare of trees. "It becomes astonishingly viable for a farmer to have a piece of his most productive land to get the tree up and running and then he can be independent from the fuel companies for the rest of his life," he said. They are known to produce fuel for 70 years. While the fuel cannot be stored for more than a few months it can be tapped. But even if it is left too long, it thickens into copaiba oil, which is used in alternative medicines and fetches around $100 a litre in the United States. And at the end of the tree's life, it can be milled to produce a light brown timber favoured by cabinet makers. "There's nothing wasted on the tree," Mr Jubow said."09/27/06 - EEStor ceramic Battery
Alternative-fuel engines of different sorts all suffer from one major drawback or another: poor range, hard-to-find filling stations, high cost, poor performance. EEStore is out to change all that with a revolutionary new kind of "battery". We put "battery" in quotation marks because the unit doesn't store power in a chemical capsule like a conventional battery, but instead uses some kind of glass- and aluminum-coated ceramics. Feel Good Cars, the Toronto company responsible for the ZENN, wants to get the unit on the road by 2008. The most significant benefit would be its efficiency: a car powered by the EEStor unit could run on the equivalent of 45 cents per gallon, driving 500 miles on $9 worth of electricity after just five minutes to charge. We could tell you this invention could be the fix for our addiction to foreign oil, but that's scary talk for gear-heads. So we'll tell you about the performance instead. The company's CEO insists that "a four-passenger sedan will drive like a Ferrari". That's a tall order, but if he's right, the prancing horse could find itself grazing on greener pastures. / Comments - 6. Let's see, at about 9 cents/kwh, that's 1000kwh of storage. 1000kwh/5 minutes = 12000 kw, or 12 MW. I'd like to see the charging station that can provide 12 MW of power to a vehicle in a safe way. This has got to be total BS. / 12. rem83 - I think you miscalculated. - 9 cents per kwh = 900 cents ($9.00) per 100 kwh, not 1,000. So the amount of power delivered would be 1,200 KW in 5 minutes or 1.2 MW. / 18. Follow up to - rem83 and mo: Amperage is measured per second. In your calculations you forgot to divide the Kwh measurements by the time factor. So, 10,000(amps) / 5(minutes) / 60 (seconds) comes out to 33.3 amps or 6 gauge wire.
09/27/06 - William Stanley first used AC lighting in 1886, not Tesla in 1890
(This was totally STUNNING news for me. I am fully aware of the Tesla fanatics who have some odd cult built up around him and am working on a page to show how Tesla ripped off others for many of his inventions (as did so many others, Einstein, Edison, Bell, Marconi, etc.) and I don't believe for a minute the 'vision in the park' story about Teslas rotating magnetic field inspiration. But, thanks to Joel Carlinksy, here is some fascinating corrective information that gives proper credit. For sure, READ the link above if you are an unbiased truth seeker who doesn't buy into all the new age BS dreamed up about Tesla. Stick with the facts, FROM THE TIME! - JWD) - Jerry, Tesla was not the first to build an A.C. power plant. William Stanley had lit up the main street of Great Barrington, Mass. A year before Tesla designed his Niagara Falls station. Tesla knew about Stanley and may have gotten the idea for alternating current from him. / Stanley, whose family still lives in Great Barrington, was a rather shy and retiring character living way up in the Berkshires, while Tesla was a flamboyant mediagenic personality living in New York with access to the national media, so he gets the credit. Stanley also invented the vacuum flask thermos bottle, which was made by a company owned by his heirs until 1935 or so. His original apparatus is on display in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. The G.B. Historical Society has a few pamphlets about him. I took some of them to one of the Tesla conferences in Colorado and spoke about Stanleys' priority. All hell broke loose! I was actually accused of being a govt. disinfo agent trying to discredit Tesla so nobody would look into his inventions more closely. The late Lilah Parish, who was head of the G.B. H.S. told me some stories about Stanley. Her uncle had worked for him and got an electric shock once that electroplated his arm with copper! What were they working with in those days that could do something like that? She said 3 engineers from Westinghouse visited Stanley to look at his A.C. system. One of them might have been Tesla, but if not, he certainly would have heard about it since he was working for Westinghouse at the time. With all the hype about Tesla from the Teslaphiliacs, it is time the facts came out. / First AC System - "William Stanley invented the induction coil, a transformer that creates alternating current electricity. In the 1880s every electricity distribution system used direct current (DC). The problem is that DC transmission over long distances is impractical, requires thick wires, is dangerous and could not be used for lighting. On the other hand, alternating current (AC) systems did not have these drawbacks. AC voltage systems could be varied by use of induction coils, but no practical coil system had been invented. Stanley's patent #349,611 changed all this and became the prototype for all future transformers. After Stanley left Pittsburgh, in 1886 he built the first AC system, providing lighting for offices and stores on the Main Street of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He made transformers, auxiliary electrical equipment, and electrical appliances. The Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company was purchased by General Electric in 1903."
09/27/06 - ZAP's Electric ZEBRA
ZAP has produced an all-electric vehicle designed to address the need for gas-free alternatives with multi-purpose city driving, from industrial fleets to commuting. Called the XEBRA PK, the three-wheeled ZAP seats two with a multi-purpose platform behind the passenger compartment that serves as a hauler, dump truck or flatbed. Selling for less than US$10,000, the XEBRA PK will debut before California regulators participating in the 2006 Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Technology Symposium in Sacramento, September 25-27. ZAP Chairman Starr cited a study that showed more than a third of new car buyers in California would buy an electric vehicle if that vehicle were priced close to a gasoline vehicle and offered similar functionality. ZAP dealer Larry Dye of Electric Wheels in Salem, Oregon said, "I've already sold over 25 of the XEBRAs, but I've sold four XEBRA PKs sight-unseen. It has many more uses: it's a great commute vehicle; it's also a hauler; a dump truck; it folds down to be a flatbed; it can be a ranch or farm vehicle; or an economical fleet vehicle. I've got several businesses that can't wait to go for their first test drive. We'll have a whole herd of XEBRAs and PKs running around Salem before you know it." Starr noted that ZAP has talked to many cities that are interested in replacing their gas powered parking enforcement vehicles. Several businesses have inquired about inter-campus transportation and even bridge districts have requested vehicles like it. Speed: Up to 40 mph (65 km/ph) / Range: Up to 40 miles (65 km) / Charger: Onboard 110 Volt AC / Motor: DC / Seating: Up to 4 (Max 500 lbs.) / Battery: Gel Cell / Classification: 3 wheel motorcycle (Zero Emission Vehicle) / Dimensions: 10’ Length (290 cm) x 4.66’ Width (142 cm) x 5.05’ Height (154 cm) / Options: Upgraded Radio/CD, Color, Leather Seats / Colors: Ocean Blue, Zebra Flash, Kiwi Green and Lipstick Red
09/27/06 - Super Nutrient mix for Increasing Crop Yields
Umar Hasan Saputra, 36 has invented a technology that can produce essential nutrients beneficial for crops. Several farmers who have had the opportunity to apply the nutrients on their fields today have testified to their efficacy having seen their vegetable productivity rise. A farmer in the slope of Mt. Merbabu, Central Java, for example, said that his tomato plant produces 14 fruits per branch. Normally, it would be only four to six. They also said that, usually, plucked tomatoes decompose in three days. However, after taking the nutrients the tomatoes can stay fresh for eight days without needing to be put in a refrigerator. Another farmer in Karawang, West Java, said that he used to earn Rp 3.5 million (US$380) per hectare of his paddy field. After using the nutrients, he earned Rp 16 million. "As the inventor, I'm also amazed at the news. I know that we don't need fertilizer (if we take this nutrient). But, to hear about an increase in productivity from four tons to eight is still a surprise," Saputra told The Jakarta Post at his Jakarta office recently. He defines an essential nutrient as that which is required for normal body functioning. It cannot be synthesized by the body. Categories of essential nutrient include vitamins, dietary minerals, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids. After 10 years, he found the formula. The discovery coincided, he said, with the discovery by Japanese and U.S. experts of essential nutrients in the deep sea. When scientists in Japan and U.S. were busy with efforts to take the nutrients popularly known as "diamonds of the deep sea", Saputra was able to produce the nutrients using his technology. "We are now disseminating the technology. It's amazing because it can solve several problems in agriculture. The nutrient can improve the quality of soil in peat bogs, coastal areas and dry land," he added. Saputra emphasized that the Saputra Technology does not only deal with nutrients for agriculture but also with medicine, water and energy. He said that he produced the nutrient in liquid and powder form. Farmers can simply combine the liquid and powder and then spray it on their plantations. Many farmers said that they did not believe that they no longer needed to use fertilizer.09/27/06 - Induction Coil Rocket Launcher
In the early '80s, when I was a member of the L5 Society and went to all the conferences of the time on commercial space dev, everybody talked about mass drivers, the electromagnetic catapaults that could be used to hurl moon material into space to be processed for colony building. This desktop induction launcher works on the same principle. When you watch the videos of the launch, you'll get an idea for just how powerful one of these coils can be.
09/27/06 - More plants make More Rain
More rain makes for more plant growth: that much is obvious. But now a statistical study of satellite images has added weight to the reverse notion: more plants also make for more rain. The result adds to the impetus to preserve green spaces in dry regions, in order to help prevent deserts from growing and encroaching on agricultural land. The new work concludes that vegetation effects account for around 30% of annual rainfall variation in Africa's Sahel region. The results are reported in Geophysical Research Letters. A simple correlation between greenness and rainfall would only show that periods of lush vegetation were likely to occur in wet seasons - hardly a surprising conclusion. So the researchers took a more subtle approach. They first examined how well past rainfall levels predicted the rainfall yet to come for each month over an 18-year period. They then added in an extra predictive factor: the previous month's greenness. If vegetation had no effect on rainfall, the predictive skill of the model would not change. But including the greenness measure did make it easier to predict subsequent rainfall levels - by 30%.09/27/06 - GM developing home hydrogen refueling device
The unit, which would make hydrogen using either electricity or sunlight, would help sidestep one of the most vexing problems surrounding the creation of the pollution-free, alternative-power cars: how to persuade oil companies to invest in expensive new hydrogen stations that would compete with their core product, gasoline. The automaker's goal is an affordable, compact unit that would allow customers to fill their cars overnight in their own garages, says GM spokesman Scott Fosgard. GM would join Honda, which has already created a model for a home refueling hydrogen unit. GM isn't alone in home refueling. Honda unveiled the third generation of its home unit last year, created in conjunction with a fuel-cell company called Plug Power. It produces enough hydrogen from natural gas to power both a car and a home. Honda also has a solar-powered refueling station in operation at its test center in Torrance, Calif. It makes enough hydrogen for 30 miles of driving a day.
09/27/06 - Ocean levels could rise from 20-80 feet
The seas are rising: how much they'll continue to rise is, to some very real degree, still up to us. If we do nothing -- if the developed world doesn't change its ways, if China burns its coal, if the rainforests are completely logged and various feedback loops (melting permafrost, open water at the North pole) kick in to make things worse and speed melting of Greenland and Antarctica -- we could (at least according to the models run) see oceans rising 23, 30 even 80 feet. Rising seas are not the most dire potential effect of global climate change, but they will cause serious damage and, even more, they are indictors of the magnitude of the transformation we are wreaking on the planet that nearly everyone can grasp, if they're told about them.09/27/06 - Guy uses VR goggles to pilot RC plane
(This is just too cool not to post! The idea is long standing and used in military applications and by NASA all the time, but this guy did it on his own. - JWD) Video of a guy who put a wireless camera on a model plane and wears VR goggles to pilot it.
09/27/06 - Israeli Innovation inspiration for Australia
In 2006 - every second export-shekel earned by industrial companies in Israel was classified as a high-technology export, in sectors such as computing, electronics and pharmaceuticals. The fact is, Israel has a staggering list of products that have been created and developed at home, just waiting for investors and commercial partners. For example, improvements in technology for glasses produce thinner, flatter lenses with reduced distortions. And an environmentally friendly system for producing snow. Israel is renowned for making the desert bloom - but now it’s gone a step further. Israeli researchers have developed heat pump systems to produce large quantities of ice and cold water, utilising low-level sources of thermal energy, and heat transfer and flexible blade compressor technologies. These systems can be used for heating, in construction, and to supply snow for ski resorts to extend the ski-season. And now a new type of biotic chocolate developed by Israeli researchers that actually helps reduce cardiovascular disease! Israel is so innovative they've taken innovation out of the science laboratory and put it into the confectionery section of the supermarket! Australia needs this same passion to innovate if we’re to become competitive again. I believe we must kick start the next generation of innovation in the private sector. That's why I’ll reform R& D investment arrangements. That's why I’ll develop the capacity and diversity of our universities. That's why I’ll rebuild our great research institutions, including the CSIRO.09/27/06 - Silicon Valley goes solar
Engineers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are taking advantage of their expertise in computer chips to design and manufacture electricity-generating solar cells that they hope will be increasingly competitive with traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. Most solar cells and chips are made from the same raw material from which the valley gets its name. Despite technological advances since the first photovoltaic cells were invented 50 years ago, solar is still two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels in the U.S. and relies on government subsidies to compete. Applied Materials uses equipment which can be retooled for silicon solar wafers, while another of its technologies -- for making flat-panel displays -- can be applied to "thin film" solar cells sprayed onto glass and other flat surfaces. "By lowering the cost and increasing the volumes, we think that solar power will become much more affordable in more places in the world," said Chief Technology Officer Mark Pinto. Solar still generates far less than 1 percent of the world's electricity supply, but it has grown by more than 40 percent annually over the past five years, according to Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. "The solar industry is the next great high-tech industry," Resch said. "Our estimate is that within 10 years solar will be the lowest cost option for electricity in the U.S." "With the help of Silicon Valley," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, clean energy advocate for the group Environment California, "California can become the Saudi Arabia of the sun, exporting new technologies for the rest of the country and world."
09/27/06 - Iraq for Sale: Unscrupulous Profiteering by Contractors
Robert "Outfoxed" Greenwald's new documentary, "Iraq For Sale," documents the disgraceful profiteering of private contractors in Iraq, like Halliburton, CACI and Titan. Greenwald's film talks with military personnel, past employees of military contractors, and the families of contractors who were killed in Iraq. He builds a compelling, damning case that the use of these contractors is putting American soldiers in harm's way, hurting US military effectiveness in Iraq, bilking the US taxpayer out of billions, and endangering the lives of the ex-military personnel who sign on with contractors on the promise of higher wages than those paid by the US military. From charging the US military $100 to ineptly wash a bag of laundry (and getting officers to reprimand soldiers who do their own laundry in the sink) to overseeing interrogation at Abu Ghraib, these military contractors are wasteful, undertrained, and grotesquely expensive. Greenwald's film features footage of bonfires built to destroy improperly ordered vehicles, computers and other equipment that the contractors purchased at taxpayer expense -- since these contractors are compensated on a "cost-plus" basis, they get paid more for wasting money than saving it.09/26/06 - Global Warming not Solar induced
Now it appears that the Sun has played only a minor role in frying the planet. Scientists have examined various proxies of solar energy output over the past 1,000 years and have found no evidence that they are correlated with today’s rising temperatures. Satellite observations over the past 30 years have also turned up nothing. “The solar contribution to warming . . . is negligible,” the researchers wrote in the journal Nature. The 11-year sunspot cycle also appears not to be linked to global warming. Production of beryllium 10, an isotope resulting from the interaction of cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere, should fall during periods of high solar activity; no such overall decrease was found in Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets over the past millennium. The researchers also discredit the idea that the Sun is implicated in past variations in climate. “Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the Sun’s brightness,” said Tom Wigley, of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who co-authored the study.
09/26/06 - Campaign in Iraq has increased terrorism threat
Views of 16 government agencies pooled. Study contradicting Bush was not made public. The National Intelligence Estimate was completed in April but not made public. Its conclusions, which were first reported by the New York Times, contradict assertions made by President George Bush and White House officials during the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. "It's a very candid assessment," said one official who has seen the report. "It's stating the obvious." The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, points out the "centrality" of the US invasion of Iraq in fomenting terrorist cells and attacks. One section of the 30-page report, Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement, describes how the American presence in Iraq has helped spread radical Islam by providing a focal point for anti-Americanism.09/26/06 - China's dangerous dustbowl
Overgrazing, logging, and loss of ground water turn nearly a million acres into desert every year, displacing millions and cutting global food supply. Violent sandstorms from China's expanding deserts have been battering Chinese cities, and their mustard-colored dust has begun reaching South Korea, Japan, and the west coast of North America. ``People dusting off their cars in California or Calgary often don't realize the sand has come all the way from China," said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who was in Beijing recently. ``There is a dustbowl developing in China that represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert of any place in the world . . . and it's affecting the world." China has always suffered from aridity. About 25 percent of its landmass is composed of deserts made famous in tales about the Silk Road, which traversed many of them. But the situation is getting worse. Overgrazing, along with persistent drought, indiscriminate use of ground water, and rampant logging, are eroding the edges of China's deserts, allowing them to merge and spread. Recent satellite imagery shows that the Badain Jaran Desert in north-central China is pushing southward toward the nearby Tengger Desert to form a single, larger desert overlapping both northwestern Gansu Province and neighboring Inner Mongolia. Expanding deserts swallow almost a million acres of land every year, China's Environmental Protection Agency says.
09/26/06 - Avoiding mortgage crisis is a priority
When the real-estate industry made it easy to borrow a lot of money, it also made it easy for people to get into financial trouble. Which is exactly what's happening, as foreclosures are surging across the country. Lenders have to help distressed borrowers find a way to dig out, and all the participants, including home builders, have to reform their business -- or someone else will do it for them. The pressure is already building. In a Senate hearing last week, regulators criticized the recent wave of exotic loans that are squeezing many homeowners and will soon hit thousands more. The problem has been evident in Texas for a while. Foreclosures have been rising at double-digit rates for four years, and unlike other parts of the country, home values haven't appreciated enough to bail out borrowers. With little equity, they can't escape a financial jam by simply selling their property or refinancing their mortgage and taking out cash. In areas with soaring home prices, those have been effective antidotes for big debt burdens. About 3,300 homes in the Metroplex are posted for the October foreclosure auction, the most since the real-estate bust of the late 1980s, says George Roddy of Foreclosure Listing Service in Addison. He says we may be approaching a peak, but he had the same thought a year ago, only to see the postings keep rising. Other parts of the country are starting to feel the pain in a big way, including areas that were at the center of the real-estate boom.09/26/06 - A reality check on plug-in hybrids
There are hybrid vehicles, whose gasoline/electric engines get great mileage. And then there are "plug-in" hybrids, only about a dozen of them in the US, which have been modified to store more electricity in beefier batteries by plugging in at night to the electricity grid. A groundbreaking study released last week sounds a cautionary note to the consumer. Plug-ins do burn less gasoline than regular hybrids - and gobs less than gasoline-only vehicles - but the high cost of their bigger battery packs will probably neutralize even significant savings at the pump, according to a report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient America (ACEEE). The cost of nickel-metal hybrid batteries may also limit the appeal of plug-in hybrids - at least in the short run. Today's conventional hybrids command a premium price - $2,000 to $4,000 more than their nonhybrid counterparts - and their owners will recover that extra cost in about three years, assuming $3-a-gallon gasoline and 12,000 miles a year of driving, the report found.09/25/06 - New Fuel Cell
Professor Don Gervasio and Sonja Tasic, a research associate, have developed an environmentally friendly hydrogen-gas generator they say can last two to four times longer than batteries of the same size and weight. Once the generator is compacted into a portable fuel cell the size of a laptop or digital-camera battery, this device will cut the weight in batteries that soldiers carry by half, Gervasio said. When it comes to the three "Bs" - bullets, beans and batteries - Gervasio said it's the beans, or food supply, that are given up first if a soldier needs to lighten his load. "These soldiers would rather go hungry than not have their radio, night-vision and range finder," he said. "If we can make a fuel cell that lasts two to four times longer, that will cut down the weight by half. Maybe they'll be able to actually eat something." The hydrogen fuel cell could also be used to power laptops, digital cameras, camper generators or even the power pads FedEx delivery people carry. The fuel cell costs a tenth to a hundredth of the cost of a conventional battery because only the fluid portion needs to be replaced, he said. Refillable cartridges will serve that function, he added. Cell phones, however, probably won't benefit from this invention. While the fuel cell is ideal for powering 10- to 50-watt medium-sized electronics, it's unlikely it can be scaled down to fit electronics the size of cell phones. The generator uses a solution called borohydride, an environmentally safe alkaline, to store hydrogen. Borohydride is a derivative of borax, a chemical compound often used in detergents. It's no more dangerous than soap water, Gervasio said. The generator works when the borohydride reacts to a metal catalyst and forms hydrogen gas. The gas is separated from the solution when it penetrates a membrane in the fuel cell, and then it mixes with oxygen to generate water and electricity. While this method is cheap and effective for medium-sized electronics, it would be too costly if applied to automobiles, Gervasio said. A car engine produces electricity at a cost of about $40 per kilowatt, whereas a hydrogen gas generator would produce cleaner energy, but at a cost of $10,000 per kilowatt.09/25/06 - Chinese Seed-Breeding Satellite Successfully Landed
Shijian-8, China's seed-breeding satellite successfully returned on Earth as it landed in Southern province of country on Sunday. The satellite, which was launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 9, spent fifteen days in space. The satellite carried 215 kilograms of seeds of vegetables, fruits, grains and cotton as scientist used the mission to carry out experiments aimed at discovering what happens to the germination and sprouting of plants when they are exposed to zero gravity, official Xinhua reported. During its short space journey the satellite sent back high-definition digital images of sprouting vegetables.
09/25/06 - Roll-Up Screen May Be Possible With New Metal Structure
Cambridge scientists say that roll-up laptop screens may soon be possible with new metal structures that can transform from flat screens into tubes and other shapes. The metal structures can be the foundation for electronic displays that can be rolled-up and carried in a bag or pocket. The metal sheets are made from copper alloy that function without moving parts by "snapping" from one shape into another. Lead researcher, Dr Keith Seffen, said they picked up the idea from a children's toy "flick" or "snap" bracelets which morph from a straight strip to become a coil around the wrist. What we have worked out is ways that you can make the shape and the stress interact with each other in a positive way." He adds, "Flexible electronics is a burgeoning area, people are looking into making very thin flexible displays that could be used for electronic newspapers, or other portable electronic media like a roll-up laptop or compact mobile phone."09/25/06 - Torvec Infinitely Variable Transmission Saves Gas
Realizing that U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources would only increase unless a real, far-reaching solution were found, Vernon, James and myself also invented the world's only true infinitely variable transmission for use with both diesel and gasoline engines. The IVT provides an uninterrupted drive through an infinite number of speed ratios, allowing ideal torque flow to propel a car, bus or truck while permitting the engine to run at optimum efficiency. It is the only IVT that can be used in all vehicles regardless of size. Our invention replaces the conventional automatic transmission in automobiles and tests have proven a 25 percent increase in fuel mileage. The IVT also is less complicated and has about 75 percent fewer parts than a conventional five- or six- speed automatic transmission, making it smaller in size and 20 percent lighter in weight. This transmission, which is simpler and less expensive to manufacture than existing transmissions, will provide the automotive industry with a higher performing product at a lower cost.
09/25/06 - Conspiracy Overview
WHEN things happen in an order that is suspicious and totally out of sync, it is possible to search for reasons that are not often obvious but entirely plausible. The most important ingredient to concoct a conspiracy theory is a very fertile imagination, the rest are many avid listeners who contribute their bit by adding more juice as the story gets bigger and bigger!! In a country like Nigeria where information is often not readily available, there are many theories that fly from lips to lips and have become almost accepted facts!!09/25/06 - New service to mine Internet for financial investing gems
A specialized search engine christened "Monitor110" promises to continually sift and sort information from nearly 40 million online sources to uncover business trends or developments before word reaches mainstream media. "It can monitor alternative news websites, government websites, regulatory sites, blogs, union websites, local newspapers," Monitor110 chairman Roger Ehrenberg told AFP. Weblogs, or blogs, are increasingly common online postings in which people offer opinions or insights regarding whatever they choose. Monitor110 will launch online at the beginning of 2007 and scan sources ranging from "alternative sites" to stock-exchange regulators for recurring information, said Ehrenberg, who once managed investment funds at Deutsche Bank. Monitor110 would be a precious resource where subscriptions to the service would be priced to match, with the target audience expected to be sophisticated investors and fund managers.
09/25/06 - Zinc Matrix batteries could change laptop game
Battery startup Zinc Matrix Power, which has developed a silver-zinc battery technology with twice the run time of lithium-ion and a much safer operation and environmental profile. The technology apparently makes its debut at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco next week (Sept. 26 to 28), and manufacturer testing will be conducted next year. The company is financially backed by Intel Corp. and the U.S. Army, which obviously sees a number of military applications. Timing couldn't be better for this little company. Given the recent safety (fire) concerns over lithium-ion batteries, and the fact that Sony batteries used in laptops from Dell, Apple and Toshiba have been recalled by the hundreds of thousands, the search is on for a battery technology that is not only safer than lithium-ion but offers better performance as well.09/25/06 - DIY Rocketman
The Rocketman, Ky Michaelson at the young age of 66 years old, has taken on a new challenge, and that is to build a hydrogen peroxide rocket powered belt. Ever since Harold Graham made the first successful flight of the Bell Rocket belt, back in 1961. About every thrill seeker in the world would have liked to had been standing in his shoes, including Ky. Ky has taken a five-month break after the successful space shot flight and has started his quest to fly with his homemade rocket belt. As Ky builds the rocket belt, he is going to document the whole procedure and write a book on how to build the rocket belt. Ky’s main goal is to fly the belt, and show the world that you to can build your own rocket belt for less than the cost of a new motorcycle. One tank holds up to 3500psi of nitrogen.
09/25/06 - Surgery in Zero Gravity
The aircraft enabling the pioneering operation is Zero-G, a plane designed and built by Europe to simulate gravity-free conditions, providing a priceless laboratory-in-the-sky to test out new technologies. Working inside a custom-made operating block, three surgeons, backed by two anaesthetists and a team of army parachutists, will remove a fatty tumour from the forearm of an intrepid volunteer over the course of a three-hour flight. Miniature surgical tools, held in place with magnets placed around the patient's stretcher, will be used to adapt to the reduced size of the operating theatre, which was designed by a French elevator manufacturer. Martin's team laid the groundwork for Wednesday's operation in October 2003, with an operation on a 0.5 millimetre-wide (.01 inch) rat tail's artery. The European space plane, a specially-adapted Airbus A300 operated out of Bordeaux, flies in a series of roller-coaster like parabolas, creating between 20 and 22 seconds of weightlessness at the top of the curve, a process repeated around 30 times for a three-hour flight.09/24/06 - Corn-to-Ethanol Process for Lower Costs, Environmental Benefits
Purdue University scientists have developed an environmentally friendly, cost-effective method for creating ethanol from corn. Using a machine originally designed to make plastics, the new Chen-Xu Method grinds the corn kernels and then liquefies the starch with high temperatures. The process produces about 2.85 gallons of ethanol for every bushel of corn processed. That output is slightly higher than current methods, but the same process that creates the ethanol also creates other marketable products. "Our process, which we are calling the Chen-Xu Method, not only makes ethanol, but products that are fit for human consumption," said Chen. "This process also produces corn oil, corn fiber, gluten and zein, which is a protein that can be used in the manufacture of plastics so that the containers are good for the environment because they are biodegradable and easily decompose. The containers would actually be edible, although there probably wouldn't be much market for that." With the Chen-Xu Method, the water input required by wet milling is reduced by 90%, wastewater output is cut by 95%, and electricity use is reduced by 47%. It also meets federal Clean Air Act standards, eliminating costs that other methods incur in meeting environmental regulations, said Chen. "The total operating cost of a Chen-Xu Method ethanol plant should be much less than that of a wet-milling plant, and total equipment investment is less than half," said Chen. "And with proper planning and management, total equipment investment should be less than that of a dry-milling plant."
09/24/06 - Shooting for Space on a Shoestring
A group of undergraduates at the University of Cambridge, UK. The group have just catapulted themselves to the forefront of the budget space scene, with the successful testing of Project Nova, a system that could hopefully allow small payloads to be sent into space for just £1,000 (US$1,900) a pop. This week, the team launched a 2-metre-wide helium balloon from the university campus. By the time it landed, 3 hours later and 45 kilometres away, it had soared to more than 32,000 metres, four times the height of Everest, recording stunning images of Earth before the balloon burst and the cameras and other instruments were guided groundwards by a parachute. The project team, spearheaded by students Carl Morland, Henry Hallam and Robert Fryers, now plans to attach a rocket to the balloon that could be fired once the balloon nears its maximum height, speeding the payload to an ultimate height of more than 100 kilometres - the officially recognized boundary of space.09/24/06 - Who is Killing the Fuel Cell?
The Autonomy project offered a chance for the car industry - and especially GM - to reinvent itself as a modern, low-polluting, lights-off factory operation. But that was then and this is now. As Lutz explains, Sequel is now just a means to an end, and that end is not fuel-cell cars but "an all-electric architecture where all forms of engines as well as fuel cells can be used". He explains: "The thinking is that the hydrogen infrastructure might not arrive, but we have an architecture that we could use for all engines. Lutz blames the American government for GM's disenchantment with its world-beating fuel cell. "The US government is dragging its feet over the hydrogen infrastructure," he says, adding that GM remains committed to producing one million fuel-cell cars profitably - but that might be in China, for Chinese markets. "China is building loads of nuclear power stations," he says, "and we know that nuclear can produce almost fossil-free hydrogen and the Chinese government is really keen to get involved." "The first automobiles were introduced into the US in the 1890s and it took 55 years for 25 per cent of the population to reject the horse and adopt the car. To get VCRs into 25 per cent of US homes took 44 years. The equivalent figure for microwaves was 30 years, for personal computers 16 years and for cellphones 13 years. Technology adoption is getting faster but it still takes time. You'd better be in it for the long haul or you ain't gonna make it."
09/24/06 - Claims of Peace, Threats of War
The flap continues over Pope Benedict's recent remarks concerning the alleged violent nature of Islam. In the West Bank and elsewhere thousands of Muslims gathered today to protest the pontiff, waving banners and calling Benedict a "coward" and an "agent of the Americans." Though the pope has expressed regret about the reactions to his speech, many are not satisfied. In the past few days enraged Muslims have assaulted seven churches in the West Bank and in Gaza. These latest large-scale protests come only a day after a meeting of Muslims clerics in Lahore announced that jihad is not terrorism and that "Islam was not propagated with the sword." In a somewhat ironic twist, Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem, perhaps unaware of the meeting's verdict, raised banners displaying the phrase, "Conquering Rome is the answer." Other protesters took up the refrain, "The army of Islam will return."09/24/06 - Brazil switches from petrol to ethanol and saves billions as the US looks on
THE Brazilian economy has saved more than $70bn (£36.8bn, E54.8bn) from its decision to switch the country’s cars from petrol to ethanol made from sugar cane, according to consultancy Deloitte. The soaring oil prices of the past two years have more than vindicated the country’s decision to push hard to make ethanol the dominant transportation fuel. Along with 2m barrels of oil a day of new oil production, the growth in ethanol use means the country now has virtually no imported oil. Given that ethanol is now 45% cheaper than petrol in Brazil, and that the revenues from sales all remain in the country, this will save the economy more than $20bn in 2006 alone, and has so far saved it an estimated $70bn in total. Between 40% and 50% of the fuel Brazilians now put in their cars is ethanol, a development that has been made possible by the growth in “flexi-fuel” cars which can switch between petrol or ethanol depending on which fuel is available. The Brazilian success is pushing other countries to look more closely at ethanol production.
09/23/06 - Bacteria producing natural gas on ocean floor
Bacteria buried deep in sediment off the coat of Peru are turning organic waste into propane, according to a study sponsored by the International Ocean Drilling Program. Kai-Uwe Hinrichs of the University of Bremen and John Hayes of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were studying 40 million year old sediment samples and noticed that the gas content was unexpectedly high. Further study revealed that microbes dissolve organic matter into acetate. The acetate is then fixed to hydrogen by another microbe to produce ethane. A third reaction then turns it into propane, which comes out of your gas grill.09/23/06 - SteamBikes past and present
Make Blog has a monster post rounding up steam-powered bicycles past and present -- these boiler-bikes look like they're likely to explode on the crossbar and take your nads with them, but they also look like they might be worth it.
09/23/06 - The Consequences of a Blistering Summer
Crops withering under the blistering gaze of the sun. Cracked mud flats curl along the edge of shrunken waterways. Fish lie dying on the dried riverbeds. And in the evening, the orange glow of wildfires pulses against the dark sky like the glow of a torch. This is not some eerie scene from a science fiction movie. This is summer in Spain in 2006, victim of drought. Spanish water reservoirs were at only 45% capacity in August. In the tourist-heavy southeast, they were as low as 8%, getting close to the sludge at the bottom. Spanish farmers face severe water restrictions and the prospect of a much smaller harvest. They will lose hundreds of millions of euros as a result. Fires peppered Spain's parched forests. In the first week of August alone, there were over 100 forest fires in northern Spain, killing at least three people. But it's not just Spain that is parched. Much of Western Europe suffers from unyielding drought. Drought has even touched the normally deep and powerful Rhine, the busiest waterway in Europe. The proud old river is a shallow and feeble portrait of its old self. Ships must carry less cargo than they once did. And shipping companies recently imposed surcharges of 50% to make up the lost revenue. The hot dry summer has a ripple effect on European life. According to the Financial Times: "Desperate to conserve water, Paris has for the first time decided not to dampen the dusty paths of its public gardens. English gardeners are banned from using hosepipes, while swimming pools remain empty in many Spanish towns." The tight water constraints also threaten livestock, as favored lush meadows and cool watering holes are now dusty fields and clumpy mud puddles. Harvest of beets, rice and corn will approach record lows.09/23/06 - Tesla Statue unveiled at Niagara Falls
"A new statue of Nikola Tesla now stands at Niagra Falls, in Victoria park on the .ca side. Tesla stands atop his famous AC motor while scribbling in the dirt with a walking stick (which refers to the event when the rotating-field principle appeared in a flash to Tesla while he was walking in Belgrade park.) The statue commemorates the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth." This great monument of Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls, Canadian side, is one of greatest recognition of Nikola Tesla's work. Tesla designed the first hydro-electric power plant at Niagara Falls and with George Westinghouse started the electrification of the world. This monument is built in one of the most beautiful and most important place in the world.
09/23/06 - Microreactors Change Propane into Hydrogen
"Microreactors have already been used for on-site reforming of fuels, such as methanol or propane, to produce hydrogen to be used in fuel cells. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have designed very efficient ceramic microreactors to do this task. The scientists say that their microreactors are much better than other fuel reformer systems. They are now trying to reform gasoline and diesel, which are more widely distributed than propane. Does this mean that one day we'll be able to go to a gas station to refill the fuel cells powering our laptops? Probably not before a while, but read more for additional details, references and a picture of a prototype."09/22/06 - Foot Driven water pump to cheaply increase crop yields
Eighteen million Kenyans -- just over half of the country's people -- live on $1 dollar a day. Most are farmers, barely able to grow enough to feed their families. Martin Fisher believes simple technology is the answer -- a pump that can increase crop yield through irrigation. Martin Fisher, KickStart co-founder: "Suddenly with irrigation, instead of waiting for the rain and getting one or two crops a year, suddenly you can grow crops throughout the year, get at least three to four harvests, you can grow high-value fruits and vegetables, and best of all, of course, you can bring them out in the dry season when the price is high." The pump isn't a handout. Fisher says that would create dependency. Instead, his non-profit group KickStart sells it for $98. That's about a third of the annual income of a Kenyan farmer. The increased crop production recovers that investment within months, eventually boosting the family from poverty to middle-class status. No translation is needed when they promote the pump as the "Super Money Maker." The pump has helped 45,000 African families in Kenya, Tanzania and Mali.
09/22/06 - Throwing Stones - Bible is also full of God-attributed atrocities
It takes eight pages in Ruth Hurmence Green's book, "The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible," just to list the mass killings ordered, committed or approved by the biblical deity. These range from drowning all but eight of the world's human inhabitants to merciless scorched-earth commandments to "utterly destroy" other nations (Deut. 7:1-2). There are countless biblical edicts to kill the innocent. The pope got in trouble for quoting a 14th-century Persian scholar who said Muhammad commanded that faith be "spread by the sword." It should be pointed out that Jesus said something similar: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34) The Christian Bible, the Hebrew Bible and the Koran share the same Abrahamic tradition. Each so-called "holy" book contains barbaric and bloodthirsty teachings which have spawned wars, persecution and strife in the name of a god. Peace-loving and civilized societies must rise above these primitive teachings by bolstering the wall of separation between religion and government.09/22/06 - Artificial Reef Made From Old Tires Becomes Ecological Disaster
A plan in the early 1970s to create a massive artificial reef off Fort Lauderdale has turned into an environmental mess with the U.S. Navy, Broward County and others trying to figure out how to remove about two million tires covering 36 acres of ocean floor. What was intended to lure game fish now is damaging sensitive coral reefs and littering Broward's tourist-populated shoreline. ''They thought it would be a good fish habitat. It turned out to be a bad idea,'' said William Nuckols, project coordinator and military liaison for Coastal America, a federal group involved in the cleanup. ``It's a coastal coral destruction machine.'' The tires dot the ocean bottom a mile and a half from the end of Sunrise Boulevard. Environmentalists say strong tides -- especially during hurricanes and tropical storms -- cause the loose tires to knock against coral reefs, disrupting the ecosystem. In some cases, tires have washed ashore. Metal clips holding the tires together corroded, and the tires spilled across the ocean floor. Unlike sunken barges also used to build artificial reefs, the tires moved with the tide, and marine life never formed. Fishermen grumbled that game fish never came because the water there was too shallow. It's unlikely some of the tires could be recycled since many of them are encrusted with marine life such as sponges and barnacles, said Jan Rae Clark, environmental manager of the department's solid waste section. Those would most likely end up in a landfill.
09/22/06 - Doesn't look much like a Face from here
NASA started it all back in 1976 with an image of an interesting mountain on Mars and a caption that described it as appearing to have eyes and nostrils. Thirty years later, the Face on Mars still inspires myths and conspiracy theories. The spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera provides data the researchers turn into colorized perspective views, which simulate the scene as though you were flying high over the region in an aircraft. The data was obtained in July and the images released today. A strong myth developed, holding that the Face was an artificial structure built by some ancient civilization. Surrounding pyramids-also just interesting-looking massifs-fueled the myth. Last year, a study helped explain why: People see faces that aren't there-on Mars or in clouds-because we have "over-learned" to recognize the human face. Other photographs of the Face taken more recently show that from different angles, it does not look much like a face.
09/22/06 - Plasma Gasification Energy-from-waste making moves in Ontario
Plasco Energy Group Inc., the plasma gasification company run by former Ottawa Senators hockey club owner Rod Bryden, has started construction of a small energy-from-waste demonstration facility in Canada's capital. The facility will process enough municipal solid waste (about 84 tonnes a day) to power itself and still feed back 4 megawatts into the Ontario grid. All eyes will be on this demonstration to see whether plasma gasification technology -- as opposed to incineration -- can cost-effectively turn post-recycled municipal solid waste into electricity while keeping below strict environmental and emissions standards.09/22/06 - Termite Enzymes help make Ethanol
These household pests can convert 95% of what they consume into energy within 24 hours. However, it's not the termites themselves that are doing this remarkable transformation, rather the bacteria and protozoa that inhabit their digestive tracts. These microbes naturally generate a broad range of enzymes that convert the cellulosic materials into fermentable sugars. The technology that works for starch isn't viable for the creation of biomass-based ethanol. Biomass has been a challenge to convert to ethanol with scientists using harsh acids and high temperatures to try to hydrolyze the cellulose molecules. In order to solve this conversion problem, Diversa Corp., a biotech company based in San Diego, examined how biomass is converted into energy in the natural environment. They found the answer in the digestive tracts of the common termite. During experiments, scientists dissected hundreds and thousands of individual termite intestines. Using proprietary DNA extraction and cloning technologies, they were able to isolate the cellulose-degrading enzymes. By reenacting this natural process, the company created a "cocktail" of high-performance enzymes for industrial ethanol production enablers. Although still in the early stages of this work, the initial results are promising.
09/22/06 - Successful Energy Savings and Rebounds that cancel them
When people save money by improving energy efficiency, or by cutting back their energy use, they have more money to spend. How they spend this money influences whether there is a rebound or an amplification effect, and the size of that effect. For example, if someone spends the money they saved on buying lots of aluminium, which is produced with large amounts of electricity, the rebound effect may be so large that total energy use goes up. However, if that person invested their money into further energy efficiency improvements, the savings would be amplified. Within this spectrum, goods and services vary considerably in the amount of energy needed to provide them. ...Energy use is still growing in many countries despite improvements in energy efficiency.09/22/06 - Artificial Heart doesn't Beat
A new concept for an artificial heart could solve some problems with older models--and test the idea that we don't need a pulse. Artificial hearts work by pumping deoxygenated blood from the body to the lungs. The device then pumps oxygenated blood through the body. The newly approved device, called AbioCor, made by Massachusetts-based Abiomed, uses an implanted hydraulic pumping system to simulate a natural heart beat. But an alternative design, conceived by O.H. "Bud" Frazier, a prominent heart surgeon and pioneer in the development of cardiac devices at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, pumps blood through the body continuously, rather than with the periodic beat of the normal heart. "Continuous flow pumps are like little turbo machines," says Tim Baldwin, program director of the advanced technologies and surgery branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda MD. "They are more durable and allow you to make smaller devices." With Frazier's continuous flow design for an entirely artificial heart, a severely damaged heart is removed and replaced with two rotor-based pumps that continually cycle blood through the body, completely taking over the function of the heart.
09/22/06 - Tie Doctors' Pay to Quality
(This will go over like a lead balloon. - JWD) Anyone who makes a living in sales knows about incentives: The better you do your job, the more money you earn. But chances are your doctor has never encountered that equation. He or she probably gets paid for whatever tests, diagnoses, or treatments are delivered, regardless of whether they are the right ones. That could soon change, if a growing number of policy makers get their way. Some private health companies have already begun offering doctors incentives for closely following standards in treating ailments like heart diseaseheart disease or diabetesdiabetes. Medicare's current system -- which bases doctors' payments on the number of evaluations, tests, and treatments they provide -- does nothing to control waste or discourage ineffective care. The IOM, a private, nonprofit group, advises the government on medical and scientific issues. Just Wednesday, a wide-ranging report released by the Commonwealth Fund detailed how rampant waste and ineffective care have become. That report found that the U.S. far outspends any other country on medical care, but lags behind -- sometimes far behind -- in nearly every relevant measure of health. Medicare should use incentive payments, combined with the force of its $300 billion-per-year medical care budget, to improve the quality and efficiency of the U.S. health system, the IOM committee said Thursday.09/21/06 - The Denial Industry suppressed Global Warming concerns for decades
For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story. The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science". What I have discovered while researching this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that manmade climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris. In December 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency published a 500-page report called Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. It found that "the widespread exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States presents a serious and substantial public health impact. In adults: ETS is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in US non-smokers. In children: ETS exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. This report estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 cases annually in infants and young children up to 18 months of age are attributable to ETS." Had it not been for the settlement of a major class action against the tobacco companies in the US, we would never have been able to see what happened next. But in 1998 they were forced to publish their internal documents and post them on the internet. Within two months of its publication, Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco firm, had devised a strategy for dealing with the passive-smoking report. (via zpepower.com)
09/21/06 - Saudi wary of “green” policies to reduce oil consumption
OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has expressed concern that oil could become a victim of “selective” environment policies and called for striking a balance between a cleaner environment and development. The kingdom, whose economy heavily relies on oil income, said the use of advanced technology to carry out environment-friendly projects is the best solution to achieve economic development without harming the climate. “We are concerned that some environment-related decisions, which some countries are trying to impose, could reduce global consumption of oil,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said. “This could hamper our economic development programmes because of our heavy reliance on oil exports,” Nuaimi told an international conference on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which opened Tuesday in Riyadh.09/21/06 - Oil for all?
(Interesting how the quantities suddenly change once they realized the quest and implementation of alternate energy sources would hurt their sales. - JWD) Abdallah S. Jum’ah, president and CEO of the state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known better as Aramco, said the world has the potential of 4.5 trillion barrels in reserves - enough to power the globe at current levels of consumption for another 140 years.
09/21/06 - 10 Scientific Frauds that Rocked the World
From mental_floss’ book Condensed Knowledge: A deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again, published in Neatorama with permission. Includes Cold Fusion, Kinsey, Eddington,...etc...09/21/06 - Hot Reminder Ring
The "Remember Ring" is programmed to breifly heat up to 120 deg F every hour on the hour on a specific date -- such as your anniversary. It powers itself with a "micro thermopile" that turns heat from your hand into stored electricity that runs its internal clock and the heater.
09/21/06 - Some details about the Roulette Predictor
Mark Howe, who sells the devices for £1,000 from a workshop in Sheffield, claims his software will also work on level wheels. Surrounded by the soldering irons and laser sensors he uses to make his devices, he gave the Guardian an apparently successful demonstration of the software he said earned him a substantial sum before he was banned from British casinos in the 1990s. The equipment consists of a clicker that records the deceleration speed of the rotor and ball, a remote computer device concealed inside a mobile phone or MP3 player, and an earpiece that instructs a player which zone the ball will land in. Mr Howe says a gambler with the equipment can gain an edge of between 20% and 100% over the casino, overturning the casino's normal 2.7% edge over customers. "Next year is free hunting for anyone interested in making money from casinos," he said. "All you need to use this is nerves, a good front and consistency."09/21/06 - Planning the SuperState - North American merger topic of secret confab
Meeting on integration of U.S., Mexico, Canada brings together top officials. Raising more suspicions about plans for the future integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a high-level, top-secret meeting of the North American Forum took place this month in Banff - with topics ranging from "A Vision for North America," "Opportunities for Security Cooperation" and "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration." While the conference took place a week ago, only now are documents about participants and agenda items leaking out. What has Dobbs and a few other vocal critics bugged began in earnest March 31, 2005, when the elected leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to advance the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. is demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of the government office implementing the trilateral agreement that has no authorization from Congress. Tancredo wants to know the membership of the Security and Prosperity Partnership groups along with their various trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements reached with counterparts in Mexico and Canada. Phyllis Schlafly, the woman best known for nearly single-handedly leading the opposition that killed the Equal Rights Amendment, sees a sinister and sweeping agenda behind the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. "Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco, Texas, last year and reaffirmed at Cancun, Mexico, this year?" she asks. "Bush is a globalist at heart and wants to carry out his father's oft-repeated ambition of a 'new world order.'" She accuses the president and others behind the effort of wanting to obliterate U.S. borders in an effort to increase the Mexican population transfer and lower wages for the benefit of U.S. corporate interests. "Bush meant what he said, at Waco, Texas, in March 2005, when he announced his plan to convert the United States into a 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' by erasing our borders with Canada and Mexico," she said. "Bush's guest-worker proposal would turn the United States into a boardinghouse for the world's poor, enable employers to import an unlimited number of 'willing workers' at foreign wage levels, and wipe out what's left of the U.S. middle class.
09/20/06 - Search for a better battery keeps going and going
Lithium-ion batteries may eventually give way to tiny fuel cells. The rechargeable li-ion batteries found in nearly all laptops, cellphones, and other portable devices can overheat or even catch fire if tiny metal fragments, left over from the manufacturing process, get into the electrolyte, the medium through which charged particles flow between a battery's positive and negative sides. The metal fragments lodge in tiny pores in the plastic separator between the battery's positive and negative sides. That causes short circuits that may lead to dangerous overheating. These concerns were the apparent cause of the recent recalls. Other chemistries could be used to create safer batteries, but so far they don't provide as much power or operating time in such a small, light package. That makes li-ion attractive, despite safety concerns. The prospects for tiny fuel cells, which aren't rechargeable batteries but can be "refuelable" and provide large amounts of electricity, may have brightened last week. A research team at Arizona State University (ASU) said it has created a hydrogen-powered fuel cell that could power laptops and small electric devices safely for three to five times longer than li-ion batteries.
09/20/06 - Defying gravity is the easy bit
Getting money to help build an anti- gravity machine that can lift the heaviest lorry or biggest ship is never the easiest task. But inventor Paul Tatham may have found the answer. Chris George of Creative Ventures Consortium, a network that works with inventors and investors, has been advising Paul, 66, a retired mechanical engineer from Bray, Berkshire, on his antigravity machine. Paul needs £250,000 to help build a prototype. The anti-gravity machine uses a coil of wound wire. The theory is that pouring liquid helium over the apparatus cools it to minus 260 degrees Celsius, which reduces the wire's resistance to electricity. A high voltage of direct current is passed through the coil. This causes the electrons to flow so quickly that they produce a negative backwards force, resulting in the absence of gravity. Paul has applied for a patent, but he has another selling point for investors - a method he has devised for extracting energy from gravity, generating electricity without creating any pollution.09/20/06 - Liberty Dollars Not Legal Tender, United States Mint Warns Consumers
Justice Determines Use of Liberty Dollar Medallions as Money is a Crime. The United States Mint urges consumers considering the purchase or use of “Liberty Dollar” medallions, marketed by the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code (NORFED), to be aware that they are not genuine United States Mint bullion coins, and not legal tender. These medallions are privately produced products that are neither backed by, nor affiliated with, the United States Government. Prosecutors with the Department of Justice have determined that the use of these gold and silver NORFED "Liberty Dollar" medallions as circulating money is a Federal crime. NORFED is headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, and the medallions reportedly are produced by a private mint in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. NORFED claims that more than $20 million dollars worth of Liberty Dollar coins and notes are in circulation. " The Feds note that "Under 18 U.S.C. § 486, it is a Federal crime to pass, or attempt to pass, any coins of gold or silver intended for use as current money except as authorized by law. According to the NORFED website, "Liberty merchants" are encouraged to accept NORFED "Liberty Dollar" medallions and offer them as change in sales transactions of merchandise or services." - (Liberty Dollars are specially-minted .999 pure silver rounds and .9999 pure gold rounds, as well as silver certificates and gold certificates sold as "warehouse receipts," which can be redeemed for gold and silver Liberty rounds.)
09/20/06 - Researchers Developing More Powerful Solar Cells
Vikram Dalal, the director of Iowa State’s Microelectronics Research Center thinks his latest project can boost the performance of an Iowa company’s solar cells by 40 to 50 percent. There is a way to manufacture solar cells using a lot less silicon. Dalal said non-crystalline silicon wafers that are about 2 micrometers thick can replace crystalline wafers that are about 300 micrometers thick. The result is thin solar cells that can absorb lots of light and can be mounted on flexible plastic and other materials. It’s the kind of solar cell technology produced by PowerFilm Inc. But the thin cells produce about half the electricity as crystalline silicon. And their performance drops by about another 15 to 20 percent over time. Iowa State researchers have made discoveries in materials science and plasma chemistry that can improve hydrogen bonding to the silicon in the thin solar cells. And Dalal said that can improve the performance of the cells by about 35 percent and eliminate about 15 percent of the drop in performance.09/20/06 - The bald truth: Men better to cut short thinning hair
It starts with a receding hairline during puberty followed by a bald spot on the back of the head. Soon, only a fringe of hair remains where there had once been a full and proud thatch. Many men suffer from male pattern baldness. Some find toupees or hairpieces uncomfortable, but turning the remaining hair into a combover is rarely an attractive option either. The best look remains a short, simple cut. Hoffmann advises people away from their first impulse covering up the thinning areas with their remaining hair. Hairstylists agree. "Making a deep part and then combing the remaining hair over it just doesn't work," says fashion hairstylist Winfried Loewel. His colleague Klaus-Dieter Kaiser, a one-time hairstyling world champion, recalls with horror the way men of earlier generations would try to hide bald spots. "When your hair starts to thin out, just cut everything around it shorter," recommends the expert. "If you leave your hair long in back and on the sides, then you only draw attention to the thinning regions," he says.
09/20/06 - Iowa Company Turns to Ammonia for Fuel
An Iowa alternative fuel engine manufacturer has reached an agreement with an irrigation pump maker in California to make the world's first ammonia-powered irrigation pump system. "We believe that the demonstration of this engine will complete years of development work and will allow the sale of our systems worldwide without concerns about hydrogen storage, cost, availability or permitting," says Ted Hollinger, HEC President. He said the company hopes to market ammonia-fueled engines into the generator market. The engines developed by HEC run on anhydrous ammonia, or NH3, which has been used by farmers for many years as a fertilizer. Sawtelle & Rosprim President Terry Kwast said most of his customers who need irrigation systems already are accustomed to handling, storing and working with anhydrous ammonia, so it presents none of the problems that hydrogen would. Anhydrous ammonia contains no carbon, stores like propane and is the second most prevalent chemical in the world, Hollinger said. Ammonia contains more hydrogen per cubic food than liquid hydrogen. Hollinger frequently refers to ammonia as the other hydrogen. He said using ammonia to power engines has advantages: -An infrastructure for storage and transportation is already in place. -Usage and safety regulations for ammonia are already in place, therefore, the process of obtaining a permit to use ammonia is usually relatively simple. -Ammonia pipelines can be found in many areas of the United States, including Iowa, and distribution of the fuel is already established. Kwast said he's been searching for years for alternatives to the diesel engines currently used in irrigation systems. With federal and state air quality regulations making it increasingly more expensive to reduce the engine emissions, alternative fuels such as ammonia are becoming more cost effective. Anhydrous ammonia is currently derived mostly from natural gas and as a result, it's price is tied to natural gas prices, which have been high in the past few years. However, new ways of extracting anhydrous from coal through a gasification process, are becoming more common.09/19/06 - Portable Air Monitoring tool
AIR [Area's Immediate Reading] is a portable air monitoring device that explores urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots. I first thought that the devices were a bit bulky, but Brooke Singer explained to me that air has to circulate inside it so the openings have to be quite wide. Besides, the size and shape of the device makes it look like a viewmaster. AIR is light enough to be carried easily at hip level or around the neck and taken around for people or "carriers" to see in real-time the pollutant levels in their neighborhood, as well as measurements from the other AIR devices in the network. The devices are equipped with a sensor that contains a gas sensing chip that detects carbon monoxide, and another chip that spots nitrogen oxides. An on-board GPS unit and digital compass, combined with a database of known pollution sources -- such as power plants and heavy industries -- allow carriers to see their distance from polluters and other AIR devices. In addition, the devices regularly transmit data to a central database allowing for real-time data visualization online. "While AIR is designed to be a tool for individuals and groups to self identify pollution sources, it also serves as a platform to discuss energy politics and their impact on environment, health and social groups in specific regions."
09/19/06 - Ceramic microreactors for on-site hydrogen production
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have designed and built ceramic microreactors for the on-site reforming of hydrocarbon fuels, such as propane, into hydrogen for use in fuel cells and other portable power sources. Applications include power supplies for small appliances and laptop computers, and on-site rechargers for battery packs used by the military. In their latest work, the researchers incorporated the catalyst structure within a ceramic housing, which enabled the steam reforming of propane at operating temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using the new ceramic housing, the researchers also demonstrated the successful decomposition of ammonia at temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. When reforming hydrocarbons such as propane, temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius prevent the formation of soot that can foul the catalyst surface and reduce performance.09/19/06 - Geoplasma - Plasma Arc Incineration
Geoplasma is planning to build a plasma arc incineration plant in a south Florida county where 3,000 tons of trash a day will be instantaneously gasified at 10,000° Fahrenheit. The process yields syngas, slag for road construction and steam for a nearby factory. The syngas is used to generate 120 megawatts a day, a third of which powers the facility. Toxic compounds are rendered harmless by the intense heat, and although the process still releases CO2, it is less per unit energy than traditional energy generation sources.
09/19/06 - Energy Games - Russian oil reversal stirs outcry
Nine months after piquing European governments by shutting the flow of natural gas in a pricing dispute during the coldest days of winter, Russia faced another din of international criticism Tuesday about its energy policies, this time from Asia. Russian regulators withdrew an environmental permit Monday for the $20 billion Sakhalin-II oil and natural gas development, which employs 17,000 people, with the two largest Japanese trading and engineering companies as minority owners. It was a sterner public rebuke than Japan issued to Russia last month after Russian border guards fired a machine gun at a fishing boat that strayed into Russian waters, killing a fisherman. Mitsui and Mitsubishi together own a 45 percent share of Sakhalin-II. EU officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the abruptness with which approval for the project had been revoked rang alarm bells, given the scale of the investment and the previous green light from the Russian environmental agency.09/19/06 - Solar-Powered LEDs to Light Up U.S. Air Bases in the Middle East
The units proved to be reliable and durable under the Middle East's extreme temperatures and harsh environmental conditions. The $767,270 order is scheduled for final installation during September and October 2006. The USMC currently uses more than 260 Carmanah GI-102 solar-powered LED spotlights in the Middle East; more than 6000 of Carmanah's solar LED aviation lights, spotlights and floodlights are in use by the USMC. The FP-50 solar-powered LED general illumination system is suitable for perimeter lighting, security lighting, sign lighting and other types of floodlight applications. It can be programmed to operate automatically from dusk till dawn, as well as on demand using an external motion sensor or other type of switch.
09/19/06 - Air Force to test Coal based Jet Fuel
The Air Force is scheduled Tuesday to test a new jet fuel made from coal instead of oil. A B-52 bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in California is expected to
