1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

You can write Comments or read the KeelyNet discussion list. Feel free to subscribe.

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

06/29/08 - Ozone, The Crazy Cylinder-shaped Car This rolling cylinder created by Istanbul designer Özkan Koral is a design concept for a Peugeot hydrogen-powered car, where each of the huge wheels is independently powered by electric motors. The body is equipped with doors that slide 360 degrees into its own frame which is impressive enough on its own. It’s controlled by a joystick, and entire front of the car opens up when the door rotates underneath. The photo shows the car completely closed with its semi-transparent windows covered up. It reminds us of those canisters you use to pass money to drive-through bank tellers. - Source 06/29/08 - U-Haul: Crooked renters refill gas tank with water Crooks have come up with a new scam to get out of paying for gas, and it's costing truck rental companies thousands of dollars. Crooks reportedly rent U-Haul trucks then, when the time comes to return the truck, top off the tank with water instead of gas, wrecking the engine. U-Haul dealers say the scam has become more prevalent as gas prices continue to rise. "We had five or six (instances of) water in fuel (tank) last week," said Kim Merow. What's the harm? Some scammers get away with it because the trucks are often handed over to the next customer very quickly. But water in the gas tank eventually brings the trucks to a sputtering stop. "It can cost up to $2,000 each time it happens, minimum," said Merow. - Source 06/29/08 - DIY Anti-Paparrazi CCTV Sunglasses Video These easy-to-make glasses use infra-red LEDs to obscure your face from cameras... and, perhaps most usefully, from ubiquitous CCTV observation. Paparazzi are very annoying for the stars but with these sunglasses, paparazzi can't take a complete picture. Why? Because with these sunglasses your face will be invisible to the camera. Disclaimer: CAUTION! . Never use them for illegal acts. / (You could have clear glasses on some kind of headband that slips on your head to shine the LEDs at invasive cameras. - JWD) - Source 06/29/08 - Oil Price Fallout: Jobs Coming Home? As the cost of shipping continues to soar along with fuel prices, homegrown manufacturing jobs are making a comeback after decades of decline. While it once cost $3,000 to ship a container from a city like Shanghai to New York, it now costs $8,000, prompting some businesses to look closer to home for manufacturing needs. The rise in transportation costs are fueling what some economists are calling "reverse globalization." "Cheap labor in China doesn't help you when you gotta pay so much to bring the goods over," says economist Jeff Rubin. Some local manufacturers have suddenly found themselves in the thick of boom times. Other sectors of U.S. manufacturing may see a boost in jobs as well. Rubin says the U.S. steel industry is poised to reap benefits. "It's not just about labor costs anymore," says Rubin. "Distance costs money, and when you have to shift iron ore from Brazil to China and then ship it back to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is looking pretty good at 40 bucks an hour." - Source 06/29/08 - U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.” Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts. According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes. All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy. - Source 06/29/08 - 'Time reversal' allows wireless broadband under the sea Wireless communication in the ocean is difficult because water molecules absorb radio waves very efficiently, an effect exploited by microwave ovens. Acoustic signals travel better, but also degrade quickly due to echoes, ambient noise, swirling currents and, again, water absorbing the signals. But a technique called acoustic time reversal can change that. The trick cleans up underwater sound signals, extending their range and capacity. Time reversal exploits the way undersea acoustic signals typically arrive clouded by echoes that travel at different speeds. For example, a "ping" may arrive as three separate sounds - one that travelled directly, an echo from the surface and then an echo from the ocean floor. If the receiver transmits the same sequence of sounds backwards, they will take the same routes back to the original source. But because the sound that took the longest to travel is sent first, the second-slowest next, and the fastest last, all three will arrive at about the same time at the original source. In effect, they converge in time, reconstructing the original signal. The retransmitted sounds will create echoes of their own, but the original signal is strong enough to stand out, say the researchers. Kuperman and colleagues managed to use the technique to transmit 15 kilobits a second at a range of 4 kilometres, and 5 kilobits per second at 20 km. It even worked over 3,500 km - comparable to the distance some whales can communicate with song - although the data rate fell to only about 100 bits per second. Conventional underwater acoustic modems achieve reliable rates of just a few kilobits per second across 5 km in shallow water. - Source 06/29/08 - Hand-held Magnetic Device Eases Migraines w/video A new study suggests that there may be a drug-free alternative to treating some migraines: a hand-held transcranial magnetic stimulation device that, when held against the bottom of the back of the head, eased migraine symptoms in some study volunteers. The idea behind the device is that patients will use it when they enter the migraine's aura phase, a period of visual disturbance that can occur before the headache begins, says Mohammad, who is a consultant for the maker of the device, a California-based medical technology company called Neuralieve. Auras may involve seeing flashing lights, zigzag lines, or other visual hallucinations, or experiencing temporary blind spots, sensitivity to bright light, blurred vision, or eye pain. The device, about the size of a hair dryer, is put up against the back of the head, and users push a button to administer the magnetic pulse. The study showed it eliminated the headache within two hours for 39 percent of participants; 22 percent in the placebo group reported no pain two hours later. The device is intended to stimulate the occipital cortex in the brain, which induces a signal meant to disrupt what's known as cortical spreading depression, a pattern of abnormal brain waves that is thought to precede migraine. - Source 06/29/08 - Extra water, wind strain Northwest power grid A doubling of wind-power supplies and an unusually concentrated surge in water levels have challenged this season's power operations like never before. "You throw a spiky late runoff into the equation, and a little extra wind, and it definitely gets interesting," said Kieran Connolly, a power manager for Bonneville Power Administration. The result: wasted power generation, excessive spill through the dams and a sometimes frenzied juggling of dam and transmission schedules. Oregon and Washington can't use all the electricity that's available. And southbound transmission lines that are at capacity can't take the extra power California consumers otherwise would eagerly devour. In some cases, power producers are paying customers to take electricity off their hands. - Source 06/29/08 - Detector for UV-Radiation Developed Russian scientists developed and patented a unique detector for ultraviolet radiation, which allows accurate measuring of received dose in any range of this dangerous radiation. Heart of this device is so-called Z-sensor, a receiver, sensitive to ultraviolet radiation. This sensor facilitates recognition and integration of UV radiation in a simple way - UV changes semiconductor structure of the sensor, and amount of change depends on both radiation intensity and exposure time. Conduction meter is scaled to measure total radiation dosage during given time period. The device also has a beeper, which warns users about a radiation source located nearby, and measures radiation in various UV ranges. The earth's ozone layer absorbs the UV-C radiation in the solar energy, so it does not present any threat. UV-A and UV-B radiation does reach the earth's surface and is believed to have long and short-term adverse effects on the eyes and vision. - Source 06/29/08 - Californian boffins find Elixir of Eternal Youth Mouse-molesting boffins in California have used biochemical signals to rejuvenate elderly, knackered bodily tissues in a fashion normally only achievable by youngsters. However, the scientists insist that they have not yet achieved an immortality drug, and if they had it would only be for mice. "We're not at a point where we're ready to inject ourselves with [this stuff]" said Dr Morgan Carlson. It seems that when we're young, the stem cells in our bodies constantly repair and reinvigorate us. When we get old, this stops happening and pretty soon people are going through your stuff. "We don't realize it, but as we grow our bodies are constantly being remodeled," according to Conboy. "We are constantly falling apart, but we don't notice it much when we're young because we're always being restored. As we age, our stem cells are prevented, through chemical signals, from doing their jobs." Apparently one can revitalise stem cells by putting them in the right chemical environment. "When old tissue is placed in an environment of young blood, the stem cells behave as if they are young again," according to the Berkeley press release - in a process not unlike that undergone by wrinkly old Hollywood stars placed in an environment of Catherine Zeta Jones.Essentially, the Californian researchers were able to persuade muscle tissues in some mice that they were young again. "We found that Notch is capable of physically kicking off pSmad3 from the promoters for the CDK inhibitors within the stem cell's nucleus, which" - as any fool would realise - "tells us that a precise manipulation of the balance of these pathways would allow the ability to control stem cell responses." Diddling with Notch and pSmad3 levels using "an established method of RNA interference" allowed Conboy and Carlson to manipulate TGF-beta proteins and fire up the dormant stem cells of a group of elderly mice. The octogenarian murines "showed levels of cellular regeneration that were comparable to their much younger peers", apparently. But people shouldn't just start swigging down Notch, pSmad3 and TGF-beta at random. Cellular regeneration, out of hand, is sometimes just another name for cancer. "We need to find out what the levels of these chemicals are in the young so we can calibrate the system when we're older. If we can do that, we could rejuvenate tissue repair for a very long time." - Source 06/29/08 - Is Someone Tampering with the Sun? Over the course of three days, a complex repeated variation in solar X-ray measurements and electron output was found. Although complex variations of electrons and X-rays are very common with our Sun, what is not common is a duplication of X- ray flux and electron flux variations over the span of three days. This is practically unheard of. Our Sun generates extremely complex, ever changing waves of energy and magnetic fields that interact with one another in ways not fully understood. Rarely do these variations repeat themselves, especially over three 24 hour periods. In the following chart (Fig. 1) we see a three day span during which via the GOES 10 satellite measures X-ray levels every five minutes around the clock. I took the complex variation of X-ray levels in Fig. 1 and stacked a copy of the plot for each day one above the other (see lower left corner in Fig. 1.) I then drew dashed vertical light blue lines to show identical changes for various X-ray flux events. Specific X-ray levels were found to repeat at the same time each day... If a weapon or other weather modification system was directed at the Sun, complex patterns like these would provide evidence for researchers that something is actually occurring to alter the Sun's X-ray and electron output in response to what was directed at the Sun. In other words, these charts may provide successful confirmation for weather control researchers, if solar X-rays and electron changes match a new weapon or weather modification system operation. Perhaps we will bring the events of 2012 upon ourselves without any outside help. Time will tell. - Source 06/29/08 - Stink bomb gas to give stroke victims new hope Scientists use hydrogen sulphide to put patients into 'suspended animation'. Some researchers are even trying to use hydrogen sulphide - the source of rotten eggs' unpleasant odour - to put patients with strokes or serious injuries into a form of suspended animation to help them survive severe traumas. This research is now being backed by the US military, who believe it could help their surgeons cope with injuries suffered by soldiers in battle. Hydrogen sulphide is corrosive, foul-smelling, flammable and deadly in sufficient concentrations. A single breath can kill. Yet the gas has recently become a buzzword in scientific circles following discoveries that in tiny doses it plays a significant role in influencing some chemical pathways in the body. One key piece of research has shown that hydrogen sulphide could protect against internal bleeding, ulcers and other gastric effects suffered by those on long-term regimes of anti-inflammatory painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen. In a series of experiments on rats and mice, Wallace and his colleagues found that these painkillers - when administered with chemicals that released hydrogen sulphide into the gut - produced no harmful side effects. 'Now we are preparing to repeat these experiments on humans,' said Wallace, who has formed a company, Antibe Therapeutics, to create drugs based on hydrogen sulphide technology. 'We envisage using standard medicines, mixed with hydrogen sulphide-releasing chemicals, as painkillers that will not cause internal bleeding to long-term users.' Mice exposed to low levels of the gas passed out, their body temperatures dropped more than 20C and their metabolic rates plunged. Once the gas was switched off, they returned to normal. Now Roth is working on research aimed at reproducing the effect in humans, buying time for patients who have had heart attacks, strokes or wounds that have caused drastic losses of blood. - Source 06/29/08 - The future of food is not on the farm Thanet Earth will be the largest greenhouse development ever seen in Britain, covering an area equivalent to 80 football pitches. So far, only one of the eight metre-high glass cathedrals is up over the dusty Kent soil. Not that the quality of the earth here is relevant. The crops will be planted in glorified window boxes hanging from the ceiling, allowing the produce - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers - to dangle at waist height for ease of picking. When in full production, Thanet Earth will be able to supply 15 per cent of this country's salad vegetable needs. In the past year, the cost of bread has risen 15 per cent. Butter is up by 32 per cent, eggs by a staggering 39 per cent. A kilo of basmati rice now costs 84p more than it did a year ago. The demand for wheat and corn has gone through the roof, a situation exacerbated by droughts in Australia and floods in the American Midwest maize belt. Get-rich-quick commodity speculators claim they are simply enabling farmers to make the money they need. The supermarkets are a more convincing target. Their profits are vast - Tesco has gone from making £2.55bn to £2.8bn, Sainsbury's from £380m to £488m - and yet they claim to be protecting us from price rises by swallowing fuel costs. Then there is the rush to biofuels, which are finally being recognised as anything but the much-heralded panacea for the damage caused by fossil fuels. To the hard-core foodies, Thanet Earth is an abomination, the exact antithesis of local, seasonal and organic. Increasingly, though, those buzzwords look like they were engineered for another, more comfortable age. The greenhouses will capture so much energy they will be supplying electricity back to the national grid, rendering the facility almost carbon-neutral. - Source 06/29/08 - Free Bug Repellent Do you also hate it when flies are walking over your computer screen? Now there is a simple and free solution: Load this page and those little pesters all soon will be gone! The page emits an ultra high frequency which is not attractive for mosquitoes and flies. Be sure to turn your audio on! Moreover the color yellow works as a natural repellent as well. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 06/29/08 - How to Clear Your DVD Clutter If you've got a growing DVD collection that's taking over your living room, design site Apartment Therapy has posted a simple howto for clearing out the DVD clutter. Basically the author spent a little time with a label maker and cheap jewel cases and was able to fit an enormous DVD collection into a much smaller space. Another alternative, of course, is to move your DVD library to your hard drive, ripping your DVDs in one click with DVD Rip or any other popular DVD-ripping tool. (via lifehacker.com) - Source 06/29/08 - God makes you stupid, researchers claim A psychology researcher has controversially claimed that stupidity is causally linked to how likely people are to believe in God. University of Ulster professor Richard Lynn will draw the conclusion in new research due to be published in the journal Intelligence, the Times Higher Education Supplement reports. Lynn and his two co-authors argue that average IQ is an excellent predictor of what proportion of the population are true believers, across 137 countries. They also cite surveys of the US Academy of Sciences and UK Royal Academy showing single-digit rates of religious belief among academics. He said: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population." Lynn pointed out that most children do believe in God, but as their intelligence develops they tend to have doubts or reject religion. Similarly, as average IQ in Western societies increased through the 20th century, so did rates of atheism, he said. - Source 06/29/08 - The Portable Hotel A French company called Abilmo has developed collapsible hotel-style dwellings that users can quickly construct in just about any location. Abilmo, a portable hotel of sorts, "packs numerous modern conveniences like electricity, a bathroom with shower, climate control and even hardwood floors into its 130 square foot space." Currently, these units are only available in Europe. - Source 06/29/08 - Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue The traditional slogan that occurs to every editorial writer who believes children's fairy tales about American ingenuity and exceptionalism. There must be a new Manhattan Project! A sampling, identities omitted because although geographically separated, they're alike in groupthink: "The United States needs to organize a Manhattan Project for alternative energy... [We] need a Manhattan Project for renewable energy ... [Let's] put some real money to work and get another 'Manhattan Project' up and running, this time for a simple solution to the energy crisis." The Manhattan Project solved one problem by dropping bombs on Japan, but it led to a host of more complicated ones. Since corn-to-ethanol is expensive, rather inefficient, tough on food prices and itself vulnerable to price fluctuation due to commodities speculation, there has been a casting around for other crops, choices thought not to vulnerable to price fluctuations which would wreck businesses. So what about Jatropha, a pest tree that produces seed pods, as an oil source for biodiesel? But perhaps even better than jatropha is, wait for it, kudzu! A trash vine that is common in the US south, kudzu contains starch. Kudzu's starch is claimed to be a better source of bioethanol than corn by its boosters... Both the jatropha and kudzu hypes are partially, hmmm, fueled by Brazil's reliance on sugar cane-to-ethanol for automobiles running on blends of fuel. Sugar cane won't grow in most of the US, ergo the casting about for a cheap equivalent from the plant world, one that needs little water. One of the best quotes this writer has seen comes from the thicket of stories on start-ups pushing algae as a cure-all for everything: carbon sequestration, water purification, automotive fuel and energy, you name it. "This gasoline [from algae] doesn't create greenhouse gases..." reported the Copley News Service a couple of weeks ago. "Its byproducts include oxygen and filtered water." - Source 06/29/08 - Flying Saucer Runs on Plasma Subrata Roy, an engineering professor at the University of Florida, is trying to patent his design of a circular, spinning aircraft he dubs WEAV, short for wingless electromagnetic air vehicle. The suggested prototype offers several advantages. It can hover and take off vertically. With no moving parts, the WEAV should be markedly reliable. And though his battery-powered model is only six inches across, Roy thinks a larger craft is possible. Electrodes lining the vehicle’s surface ionize the surrounding air. This creates plasma on the vehicle’s exterior. An electrical current sent through this plasma generates a force that not only produces the necessary lift and momentum. It also stabilizes the vehicle in windy conditions. Looking like a flying bundt pan, the WEAV design is partially hollow and continuously curved. This larger surface area improves lift and control. Flying in Earth’s air requires a thrust at least 10 times greater than in outer space where drag and gravity are lower. And the plasma necessary to fly also obstructs wave transmission used for communicating with a remote source. - Source 06/29/08 - Video - Bush Compilation What a mistake! Some hilarious segments. - Source 06/29/08 - VW Golf Twin Drive Plug-In Hybrid Diesel Makes Prius Look Thirsty The Twin Drive can be run in electric-only mode for a range of up to 30 miles using an 82 HP electric motor. But, there's also a 2.0-liter turbo-diesel that makes 122 HP which can take over once the batteries have been drained. When the two powerplants combine, you become Captain Planet have a parallel hybrid with about 174 HP. The range is aided even further by regenerative braking to charge the batteries, and start-stop technology that shuts the engine off when idling in traffic. - Source 06/29/08 - Strange things video Interesting and odd photos from around the world. - Source 06/27/08 - $700 device turns water into fuel w/video "Now instead of filing up every two days, I'm doing it every three to four days. I'm saving hundreds of dollars a week" says Baldwin. The hydrogen generator claims to maximize the gas in your tank by giving it a better burn. Scientist Adrien Burkhart of Chandler is the brains behind the device. "By adding hydrogen to that combustion chamber, we get you to a 95-plus percent burn rate. So now you're burning more fuel." claims Adrien Burkhart, Hydrogen Concepts owner. The hydrogen generator has been around for 2 years, with some 20,000 units already in use across the country. "We've got a few hundred thousand miles on a unit and they're still going. They're very robust, very simplistic." says Burkhart. Several pieces make up the system. It's installed in the front of your vehicle. Total cost: about $700. - Source 06/27/08 - Feds: Energy Use To Grow 50 Percent In 20 Years Despite persistently high oil prices, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent over the next two decades with continued heavy reliance on environmentally troublesome fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, the government predicted Wednesday. Without mandatory actions to address global warming, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere each year from energy use will be 51 percent greater in 2030 than it was three years ago. - Source 06/27/08 - Want to Enhance Your Brain Power? A noninvasive way to electrically stimulate the brain, known as transcranial direct current stimulation, has shown success in enhancing learning. The relatively low-tech approach delivers a gentle current to the brain via a large sponge, shown here fixed to a volunteer’s head. Research hints that electrically stimulating the brain can speed learning. Previous small-scale studies have suggested that a stream of current can improve motor function, verbal fluency, and even language learning. Transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), in which an electrical current is passed directly to the brain through the scalp and skull. The device is simple: a nine-volt battery that's been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for delivering drugs across the skin is connected to large flat sponges that are moistened and then applied to the head. It delivers a gentle 2 to 2.5 milliamps of current spread over a 20 to 50 square millimeter area of the scalp for up to 15 minutes. Little of that current actually reaches the brain--about half is shunted away from the target area, and the other half quickly dissipates as it gets farther from the scalp. Wassermann's team targets part of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area involved in higher-level organization and planning, as well as in working memory. - Source 06/27/08 - Bangalee’s Mr. Hydrogen comes clean on power Professor Neville Stephenson OAM fresh back from the World Hydrogen Energy Conference where his plans for clean energy have created a buzz of their own. He and his team have created a carbon-free way to produce energy, and it can use carbon and the even more global warming gas methane to run. The conference held every two years in a different country is a chance for the people with the ideas and hardware to meet the people with the money and influence. “Nobody has this technology, it has been developed over the last 10 years and now has more than $2 million invested in it from Australian investors.” They now have a factory in Thailand and expect that at the next conference they will be speaking about where their technology is being used rather than how it could be. “We can currently produce 67,000 litres of hydrogen in two hours, but we’re aiming to build a unit that is 200 times larger than that one.” - Source 06/27/08 - Gov't warns of oil scheme The provincial government issued a warning Wednesday about a bogus investment scheme that claimed royalties from the Bakken oil play in southern Saskatchewan would be paid directly to investors. The warning is related to an online document that advertises "Crown Revenue Distributions" (CRDs) that send cheques of as much as $2,000 every 10 days to investors. The item said Saskatchewan had implemented the CRDs to attract money that would otherwise go to Alberta. It's a complete fabrication, said Roy Schneider, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy and Resources. The document ends by advertising a "special report" called Saskatchewan's CRD Plan: How to Collect Steady Income Every 10 Days. However, in order to receive that report, the readers are told they must first sign up for The $20 Trillion Report, a subscription for which costs $99. - Source 06/27/08 - Scientific American: five 3D printers Last month, the open source 3D printer RepRap made the first successful copy of itself. And it's not the only 3D printer technology emerging from the workshops of ingenious makers. Over at SciAm.com, JR Minkel posts a slideshow of five machines to "print" 3D objects, including the RepRap, Fab@Home, and, seen here, the amazing Candy Fab from Evil Mad Scientist Labs. The Candy Fab prints objects by fusing layers of sugar. - Source 06/27/08 - Los Gatos Inventor Develops Home Fueling Station Go to most gas stations in the Bay Area and you're paying over $4.50 a gallon. But at Tom Quinn's house in Los Gatos, he pays a fraction of that for fuel. He makes ethanol with his new invention - the EFuel100 MicroFueler. "Consumers have been making ethanol, which is just alcohol, for thousands of years," Quinn said. "I call it third grade science." "Our machine works just like a washing machine. You connect to 110 or 220 (volt) power, connect water in, water out," Quinn said. The reason why boiling units are not required is because the machine uses a proprietary nanotechnology membrane to separate water from ethanol. First sugar and yeast is mixed with water and fermented. Over 1-2 days it is pumped into a distillation column where a vapor of ethanol and water passes through the nanotech membrane. Water filters out tiny holes while ethanol continues through an exit port. The process requires more sugar than you probably have stored in the pantry. Twelve pounds of sugar makes one gallon of ethanol. If sugar stays at 10 cents per pound, producing homemade ethanol costs $1.20 a gallon. But if you have access to a brewery or a winery's discarded alcohol, producing ethanol from alcohol will set you back just 10 cents a gallon in energy costs and a few hours time. Most vehicles-even if they were never intended to run on ethanol, can run on at least 15 percent - 50 percent ethanol. But there are certain instances where you will need to make minor adjustments to your car by installing an ethanol converter box. The technology runs about $400 depending on the make and year of your car. Quinn claims, "Once you have that converter, it will electrically convert your car computer and will be able to run on 100 percent ethanol. So, that means you can kiss the gas station good bye." Homemade fuel comes with an upfront cost. The EFuel 100 MicroFueler's price tag is $10,000. But, you can siphon off a few thousand in tax rebates. - Source 06/27/08 - NO NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN THE U.S. BY 2014 w/video We need an ample supply of vehicles that can reliably utilize an alternative fuel; we need ample distribution and supply outlets for the alt fuel(s); and we need abundant resources (preferably located on the North American continent) to ensure a continuous supply of the raw material to produce the alt fuel. Next, we need available, plentiful, and affordable environment-friendly fuel solutions to the gasoline predicament (regardless of how or why the crisis exists and which conspiracy theory you subscribe to). THE CONTENDERS for the fuel solutions are: • Electric (straight plug-in battery or fuel-cell related) • Hydrogen - internal combustion engine • Solar • Ethanol • Bio-diesel • Compressed air • Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) • Propane. CNG and PROPANE VEHICLES - The prime requisite to make No New Gasoline-Powered Vehicles By 2014 a reality is vehicles that can reliably use an alternative fuel source. Unbeknownst to a great many Americans is that most if not all major automakers already produce vehicles that use CNG and/or propane, and they’ve been doing so for years. The list includes GM, Ford and Chrysler. Perhaps even more surprising is that many of the models, including Honda’s Civic GX are manufactured in North America. So obviously the technology is proven and the car companies know how to make them. CNG has a lower price per gallon (from about $1.25 to $2.75) and greater domestic reserves. Propane provides greater energy output per unit of measurement and offers more existing consumer outlets (there are literally thousands of propane dealers located throughout the country, in virtually every city and town). - Source 06/27/08 - WTF? NC Offers to Replace 10,000 License Plates "In light of recent discussions about the Internet habits of the older generation, it's comforting to know that in North Carolina, up to 10,000 license plates containing the potentially offensive 3-letter WTF combination will be replaced by the Motor Vehicles division at no cost - if the owner of the vehicle finds the plates offensive. As reported on Winston-Salem's television station WXII, the MVD was alerted to the problem by an irate 60-year-old technology teacher who'd been clued in by her grandchildren. The article includes a helpful slide show of twenty Internet acronyms every parent should know. The article doesn't include any information on how you could actually apply for a WTF license plate." / Popular acronyms - POS - parents over shoulder, PIR - parents in room, P911 - parent alert, PAW - parents are watching, PAL - parents are listening, ASL - age/sex/location, MorF - Male or Female, SorG - Straight or Gay, LMIRL - let's meet in real life, KPC - keeping parents clueless, TD2M - talk dirty to me, MOOS - member of opposite sex, MOSS - member of same sex, WYCM - will you call me?, IWSN - I want sex now, NIFOC - nude in front of computer, GYPO - get your pants off, ADR - address, KFU - kisses for you, NALOPKT - not a lot of people know this. - Source 06/27/08 - Alternative Fuel Specialist Says All Water Run Car Impossible You must have another form of energy too, either a stored energy of some sort (like gasoline) or electricity. Alternative fuel expert Theodosios Korakianitis says a water-only fueled car is impossible. Recently a Japanese company claimed to have invented one, Korakianitis says you must have another form of energy too, either a stored energy of some sort (like gas) or electricity. - Source 06/27/08 - Molten Salt Provides Highly Efficient Thermal Storage Despite their widespread use, solar technologies suffer the limitation of most renewable technologies: an unpredictable operating profile due to weather variations. However, using the highly efficient properties of molten salt for heat transfer, one technology insulates electricity production from weather volatility and, more importantly, it offers the capability to dispatch electricity as needed without requiring the use of natural gas. This technology is a concentrating solar power (CSP) technology, built around a proprietary central receiver tower and molten salt loop. The salt is a combination of sodium and potassium nitrate, with a melting temperature of 460°F. In the liquid state, molten salt has the viscosity and the appearance similar to water. "In solar applications, molten salt is used for a number of practical reasons," says Terry Murphy, Chief Executive Officer for SolarReserve, who along with others helped develop the molten salt technology at Rocketdyne. "Molten salt is a heat storage medium that retains thermal energy very effectively over time and operates at temperatures greater than 1000°F, which matches well with the most efficient steam turbines. Second, it remains in a liquid state throughout the plant's operating regime, which will improve long-term reliability and reduce O&M costs. And third, it's totally 'green,' molten salt is a non-toxic, readily available material, similar to commercial fertilizers." A primary advantage of molten salt central receiver technology is that the molten salt can be heated to 1050°F, which allows high energy steam to be generated at utility-standard temperatures (1650 psi minimum, 1025°F), achieving high thermodynamic cycle efficiencies of approximately 40 percent in modern steam turbine systems. - Source 06/27/08 - Suburbia becomes untenable with rising gas costs Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the outer edges of metropolitan areas. As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a restructuring with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs. Some proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia. "Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and '70s - slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay," said Christopher Leinberger, an urban land use expert, in a recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly. Most experts do not share such apocalyptic visions, seeing instead a gradual reordering. - Source 06/27/08 - Energy crisis: Turning-point of humanity After more than 150 years of increasing availability of energy and an explosive growth of the world population, we are now entering an era of always decreasing availability of energy. The oil-price rises explosivily. This time it is not about some action of OPEC, a threat of war or a cold winter. Today's rises in price are the result of a turning-point in the oil supply. Demand keeps growing and the oil extraction has reached its ceiling. And, as the oil exporting countries use more and more oil themselves, less oil is offered on the export-markets. Those who count on alternative energy sources are wrong. Gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar energy cannot make up the shortage of oil. The world population will have to do with less energy. Today's mix of energy use consists of 36 percent oil, 24 percent gas, 28 percent coal, 6 percent nuclear, 6 percent hydro-power and 1 percent renewables, like wind and solar energy. The explosive growth of the world population has been possible by the one-time consumption of fossil energy. We now have reached the top of the energy-extraction. The extraction of the remainder demands more cost and efforts for a lower output. During our lifetime we never knew anything else but the growth model. That is in use nearly everywhere in the world. That is why we do not realize sufficiently, it is just an economic model. It only applies in a situation of permanent increase of energy, raw materials, working force and consumers. When there is less energy available than needed for a big population, we should - logically - strive for a smaller population. If we start the decrease in population early enough, then, counted per inhabitant, prosperity can be maintained at a high level. (When the population is too big, it will be war and economic crisis.) - Source 06/27/08 - Big Oil and the war in Iraq IT TOOK five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon. ($543,236,299,998 Spent on Iraq as of 4:22 pm June 10th!) It is the inescapable open question since the reasons given by President Bush for the invasion and occupation did not exist, neither the weapons of mass destruction nor Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The New York Times reported last week that several Western oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron, are about to sign no-bid contracts with the Iraqi government. The Associated Press quoted Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit as saying he believed the contracts were a first step toward production-sharing agreements. "These companies are in it for the money, not to make friends," Gheit said. This of course blows a hole in another ancient Bush fallacy, the one in which former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said "the oil wells belong to the Iraqi people" and former secretary of State Colin Powell seconded him by saying Iraqi oil "will be held in trust for the Iraqi people." - Source 06/27/08 - Internet Gridlock Video is clogging the Internet. How we choose to unclog it will have far-reaching implications. Video downloads are sucking up bandwidth at an unprecedented rate. A short magazine article might take six minutes to read online. Watching "The Evolution of Dance" also takes six minutes--but it requires you to download 100 times as much data. The Internet is a lot like a highway, but not, contrary to popular belief, a superhighway. It's more like a four-lane state highway with traffic lights every five miles or so. A packet of data can blaze down an optical fiber at the speed of light, but every once in a while it reaches an intersection where it has the option of branching off down another fiber. There it encounters a box called an Internet router, which tells it which way to go. If traffic is light, the packet can negotiate the intersection with hardly any loss of speed. But if too many packets reach the intersection at the same time, they have to queue up and wait for the router to usher them through. When the wait gets too long, you've got congestion. The transmission control protocol, or TCP--one of the Internet's two fundamental protocols--includes an algorithm for handling congestion. Basically, if a given data link gets congested, TCP tells all the computers sending packets over it to halve their transmission rates. The senders then slowly ratchet their rates back up--until things get congested again. - Source 06/27/08 - British steam car unveiled for attempt at land speed record A British-built steam car that could break the longest-standing land speed record for such vehicles has been unveiled. The team behind the car is aiming to improve on the 128mph set by Fred Marriot in 1906. The vehicle was shown to the media for the first time at Thorney Island in Portsmouth. A team of British engineers has designed a car powered by steam which they hope will go over 200mph. - Source 06/27/08 - Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause A ruling this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that DHS does indeed have the authority to search electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it would inspect a briefcase. The lawsuit that prompted the ruling was the result of more than 20 cases, most of which involved laptops, cellphones, or other electronics seized at airports. Travelers who have their computers seized face real headaches. "It immediately deprives an executive or company of the very data?and revenue?a business trip was intended to create," says Susan Gurley, head of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which is asking DHS for greater transparency and oversight to protect copied data. "As a businessperson returning to the U.S., you may find yourself effectively locked out of your electronic office indefinitely." While Hogan had his computer returned after only a few days, others say they have had theirs held for months at a time. As a result, some companies have instituted policies that require employees to travel with clean machines: free of corporate data. - Source 06/27/08 - Harness volcano power, energy experts say Volcanoes and hot springs could supply up to 25 per cent of America's power needs, energy experts have said. Companies are being invited to lease the rights to explore geothermal resources beneath Mount Spurr, a snowcapped 11,070-foot volcano that most recently erupted in 1992 showering much of Anchorage with volcanic ash. According to experts, America is only just waking up to the ancient power source lying beneath dozens of states that has the potential to supply as much as 25 percent of the nation's energy needs. The Bureau of Land Management has just surveyed 11 western states and Alaska for "lands with high potential for renewable geothermal resources". The study showed around 200 million acres of public land with geothermal potential, Mr Gawell said. But he estimates 80 per cent of geothermal systems remain undiscovered as they have no tell-tale surface feature such as a hot spring. "We're still just finding the obvious stuff." - Source 06/27/08 - Determining life with biogenetic computer algorithms The real definition of life is a hidden coded algorithm that forms the law of life just like the law of Gravity or Relativity. It is something fundamental in the universe. Wherever possible chemistry is programmed to organize itself into living cells. The most fascinating part of the whole story is the long-term evolution into intelligent beings. What that means wherever possible life will form and evolve into intelligent life forms. But all life forms may not be similar. What we have learnt from evolutionary biology is that life ‘program’ facilitates and encourages mutation - the defect or imperfectness in replication. That provides the notion that as life evolves; many species will be there. These species may not be similar to what we can see, believe or even imagine. An extraterrestrial intelligent living being can be in the form of ion or gas or even dark matter. Scientists are trying to understand the possible other life forms through super smart biogenetic computer algorithms encompassing law of emergence and life. These algorithms not only can predict different life form characteristics, they can also fast forward in algorithmic time frame to suggest an intelligent life form eventually will look like. - Source 06/25/08 - Litroenergy - Glowpaint - New Light Source Material Litroenergy is a patent pending designed light source material that emits light for 12 plus years- without electricity or sun exposure! Our development/design of long-life, self-luminous micro particles called Litrospheres (non-toxic) emit light continuously for 12 plus years (half-life point) without any exposure to a light or other energy (not effected by cold or heat). This extremely low cost material offers 24/7 light, which can be injection molded or added to paint. It is 5,000lb crush resistant, stable and constant light source (gives off no U.V. rays). It is designed to give off almost any color of light desired. Our goal is to mass produce this material and supply OEM’s. Litroenergy has potential to save billions of dollars in energy costs world-wide. Litroenergy surpasses all known available lighting options for cost/durability/reliability (12+ years) and safety. The uses are unlimited as the imagination; however we predict the safety aspects to be the front runner in application (light safety tape, lighted life rafts/flotation equipment, light safety markings/equipment, etc.). Supplemental light source will be second as the material is bright and one can read by it, if you have some Litroenergy lighting you will not need to always turn on a light source that requires electricity. The use of Litroenergy in toys, sports/camping equipment, bikes and novelty uses will be close in applications. The fill rate of Litroenergy micro particles in plastic injection molding material or paint is about 20%. The cost to light up 8 ½ x 11 piece of plastic 1/8” thick is about .35 cents. We appreciate this opportunity to introduce our patent pending designed Litroenergy light source material to the world. - (Thanks to Ross for sharing this link. - JWD) / A company known as MPK claims that throwing some tritium inside a phosphor-coated microsphere will result in a substance that can glow continuously for over a dozen years without an iota of energy input. The technology is known as betavoltaics, using a radioactive gas as its power source. Interestingly enough, tritium radiation (beta particles) can be safely contained by the microspheres it lives inside so there is no need to purchase a radiation suit anytime soon. The materials are not affected by heat or cold, should be able to emit just any color. Will this replace traditional lighting anytime soon? Probably not, as an expert in the matter claims that the intensity is not strong enough to match the light output or replace electric light bulbs. Add that to the fact that there is absolutely no way to turn this thing off. - Source 06/25/08 - A Hippocratic Oath For Scientists "In response to what appears to be a growing problem of scientific misconduct, a group of people at the Institute of Medical Science at University of Toronto in Canada wrote a scientist's version of the Hippocratic oath. This oath (which is cited in the story) was recited by all graduate students in the biological sciences at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year." / Version 1 - "I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member." / Version 2 - Here are the seven commandments as laid down by Sir David: 1. Act with skill and care, keep skills up to date 2. Prevent corrupt practice and declare conflicts of interest 3. Respect and acknowledge the work of other scientists 4. Ensure that research is justified and lawful 5. Minimise impacts on people, animals and the environment 6. Discuss issues science raises for society 7. Do not mislead; present evidence honestly. - Source 06/25/08 - Energize Your Home With Solar Curtains Researchers at MIT have created designs for flexible photovoltaic materials, known as solar textiles, that can also be draped as curtains, which may change the way buildings receive and distribute energy. To design the solar textiles, Sheila Kennedy, an expert in the integration of solar cell technology in architecture, from MIT, used a 3-D modeling software. This software generated membrane-like surfaces that can become energy-efficient cladding for roofs or walls. A recent project, “Soft House,” exhibited at the Vitra Design Museum in Essen, Germany, illustrates what Kennedy means when she says the boundaries between walls and utilities are changing. For Soft House, Kennedy transformed household curtains into mobile, flexible energy-harvesting surfaces with integrated solid-state lighting. Soft House curtains move to follow the sun and can generate up to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity - more than half the daily power needs of an average American household. - Source 06/25/08 - Easy Conversion of Organic Matter to Hydrogen Researchers at Penn State have discovered a process for generating hydrogen from the decomposition of a common acid, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers placed naturally occurring bacteria into acetic acid, which is produced when glucose or cellulose ferment. Acetic acid is the primary component in vinegar. The researchers added a granulated graphite anode and a cathode of carbon with a platinum catalyst, converting the entire system into a fuel cell. As a consequence of the bacteria's digestion of the acetic acid, electrons flowed from the anode to the cathode, generating up to 0.3 volts of electricity. With a total of 0.5 volts of energy - meaning that 0.2 volts must be added from an external source - the liquid starts to break into its component parts and hydrogen gas is released. "This process produces 288 percent more energy in hydrogen than the electrical energy that is added to the process," Logan said. If the cell is set up to siphon off some of the hydrogen that it produces in order to power its own process, the cell produces 144 percent more energy than it uses. Fuel cells last until the fuel that powers them (in this case, acetic acid) is consumed. In contrast to batteries, in which the anode and cathode are consumed and must be replaced, the fuel cell can be recharged with fuel and continue operating.- (Thanks to Herbert R. for this link. - JWD) - Source 06/25/08 - Lack of Sunlight Could Lead To Early Death "Members of this community may want to venture out of the basement more often, because Dr. Harald Dobnig and his team have found that vitamin D deficiency leads to increased mortality. These results still hold when they take into account such factors as exercise and heart disease. Low vitamin D status has 'other significant negative effects in terms of incidence of cancer, stroke, sudden cardiac death and death of heart failure,' Dr. Dobnig said. The evidence of ill effects from low vitamin D 'is just becoming overwhelming at this point.' Vitamin D3 is usually produced by exposure to the UV-B in sunlight, but in high latitudes, especially in the fall and winter, insufficient UV-B gets through the atmosphere to produce enough vitamin D3, even with hours of exposure. The researchers are recommending that people at risk for deficiency take 800 IU of vitamin D3 daily. Just don't go overboard - as a fat-soluble vitamin, D3 is more capable of causing adverse effects at unnaturally high dosages. The human body tops out at producing about 10,000 IU per day." - Source 06/25/08 - First US Offshore Wind Power Park In Delaware "Offshore wind power company Bluewater Wind has announced an agreement to build America's first offshore wind turbine park off the coast of Delaware. 'Each turbine [will sit on] a pole about 250 feet above the waterline... the units are to be constructed to withstand hurricane-force winds. From the shore, the park will be visible only on clear winter days, and the turbines will be nearly invisible during summer months when Rehoboth Beach fills with vacationers. Each blade on the three-blade rotor is to be 150 feet long.' The wind farm will power 50,000 homes in Delaware, using about half of its capacity." - Source 06/25/08 - Experimenter claims 60mpg with Hydroxy Mix 63.3 Average MPG @ 60 MPH eastbound on I-40 in AZ. 100 series cell unit system in the trunk. A good site for learning about hydroxy gas production is; Hydrogen/Oxygen Study Group. Water can be transformed into the perfect energy carrier. It is abundant, non-polluting, and eternal in nature. If you split it hyper-efficiently, then combust it efficiently. After harvesting the released energy, you again have H2O as the by-product, ready to use again. Hard to beat! Will the greed of big oil and big business ever be satisfied enough that they can stop destroying this planet? I seriously doubt it. There is energy aplenty in the wind, the sun, in flowing rivers and waterfalls... Even in a cup of water, latent there, just waiting for the adventurous... Go for it! (Thanks to Bill W. for the headsup. - JWD) - Source 06/25/08 - 8 drugs doctors wouldn't take If your physician would skip these medicines, maybe you should, too. Plenty of M.D.'s do know which prescription and over-the-counter drugs are duds, dangers, or both. So we asked them, "Which medications would you skip?" Their list is your second opinion. If you're on any of these meds, talk to your doctor. Pseudoephedrine, Visine Original, Prilosec and Nexium, Advair, Avandia, Celebrex and Ketek. Read article for full details. - Source 06/25/08 - The misguided message of the ‘addict-in-chief’ Way back in 2006, the president delivered a State of the Union address that actually pretended to care about energy policy. Bush graciously acknowledged that we “have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” The president argued, persuasively, that we need to “break” the addiction through the development of “cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources.” That was then. Now, Bush isn’t especially interested in breaking the addiction; he actually wants to exacerbate it. Indeed, just yesterday, in an unusually dumb radio address, the president said unless Congress approves his drilling policy, Democrats should be considered responsible for higher gas prices. The NYT’s Tom Friedman does a nice job today of taking the president to task. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.” Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.” - Source 06/25/08 - Northern Lights leading sat navs astray The next time your sat nav leads you down a dead end it might not be faulty software that's to blame. Scientists at Bath University claim the devices may suffer from interference from space. The scientists claim that the Northern Lights can cause electrical interference with GPS signals, causing sat nav devices to state a faulty position or lose their place altogether. "Space weather impacts on GPS include the introduction of range errors and the loss of signal reception, both of which can have severe effects on marine and aviation navigation, surveying, and other critical real-time applications," the researchers state, in a paper published in the online journal, Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications. The researchers used three GPS devices in Norway to measure the impact on signal strength before, during and after an aurora borealis event. They claim the signal wavered significantly during the event, with the devices often failing to get a lock on the satellites. "Anywhere that the aurora is visible, it will cause disruption," lead researcher Professor Cathryn Mitchell told The Daily Telegraph. "Although most people in the UK can't see the aurora when it is happening, because of cloud or ambient light, it can still affect the GPS signal. We have just passed a minimum in activity but we are due to hit a maximum in 2012, which is when we would expect to see most disruption." Device makers claim such interference will only affect devices temporarily. - Source 06/25/08 - IRS Increases Mileage Reimbursement Rates The Internal Revenue Service today announced an increase in the optional standard mileage rates for the final six months of 2008. Taxpayers may use the optional standard rates to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving purposes. The rate will increase to 58.5 cents a mile for all business miles driven from July 1, 2008, through Dec. 31, 2008. - Source 06/25/08 - Hybrid hysteria Writing for the Heartland Institute, John Dale Dunn of the American Council on Science and Health notes many people who have bought taxpayer-subsidized hybrids are trading them in - at huge losses in some cases - for cars with internal-combustion engines because of concerns over unavoidable, prolonged exposure to electromagnetic fields created by hybrids' batteries. Even The New York Times says their fears are "not without merit." The National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute are two of many agencies that say long-term exposure to a strong electromagnetic field is hazardous. Drivers say their hybrids raised their blood pressure, caused drowsiness behind the wheel and worried them sick about increased leukemia risk. Tests have documented "dangerously high" EMFs in hybrids, leading owners "to conclude driving the vehicles is not worth risking blood for oil," Mr. Dunn wrote. We think this is all a bunch of hooey, of course, because a National Research Council review of more than 500 studies on EMFs found the fields do not cause disease or cancer. - Source 06/25/08 - Tricorder-like Device Identifies Life Forms Using nothing more than a battery-powered device that emits a beam of ultraviolet light, future robotic explorers will be able to identify the building blocks of life on other planets and moons. A group of scientists in the U.S. and the U.K. have developed a small device which uses a low-power laser beam to sweep over rocks or soil, identifying identify organic substances that are the signposts of life as we know it. Specifically, the little machine "sees" life by causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), often called the earliest form of organic matter in the universe, to light up. The discovery is so promising that it's likely to be launched out with the next generation of Mars rovers. While using fluorescence to illuminate organic material has been done for decades, light sources were too large and unwieldy to use for a robotic mission to another planet, said [researcher Michael] Storrie-Lombardi. However, new generations of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are very small, reliable and energy efficient, he added. "Placed on a Mars rover, one of these LEDs positioned a few centimeters from a target can easily provide enough light to produce fluorescence in small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," Storrie-Lombardi said. "But even more encouraging is the very recent development of a small 375 nanometer laser diode that can illuminate anything a PanCam can see, including geological layers and crevices high up on an otherwise inaccessible rock outcrop." - Source 06/25/08 - Airlines to US: Please Don't Make Us Fingerprint Foreigners Could conditions get any tougher for the airline industry? Possibly, if the US government has its way. Travel industry executives and governments around the world are pushing back against a plan to require airlines and cruise lines to collect fingerprints from all foreign passengers exiting the country. According to the Washington Post, airline reps complain that the move represents the government's attempt to "outsource" the responsibilities and costs associated with border control, setting a dangerous precedent of personal data being controlled by private companies. - Source 06/25/08 - Are Speed Bumps the New Electricity Generators? Two Palestinian teens invented a new way to generate electricity from the aggravating speed bumps that are found on a countless number of streets in many Arab countries. Fourteen-year-old Anan Ismail Ayad and Haytham Jumaa Abd Al-Gawwad, who attend Al-Ma`had Al-Arabi School in Al-Quds City, invented a mechanical speed bump that could possibly replace the speed bumps regularly found on streets. The new speed bump is capable of converting the vertical motion of cars pressing down on the speed bumps as they drive over them into electricity. This electricity is stored in batteries that could potentially be used to provide the electricity required to operate different pieces of equipment. "The device is made up of two parts; the first part is placed in a pit around 30-cm deep, while the second part consists of the speed bump, which is above the road. "When cars drive over the speed bump, the top part of it descends slightly. During this small motion, the up and down movement created by the weight of the car is converted into a circular motion that activates a linked generator. The generator goes on to create electricity." "The generated electric current is stored in batteries that can be used to operate street lights, traffic lights, or any other piece of equipment," he explained. According to Ayad, each speed bump can generate 10 kilowatt of electrical energy in a 12-hour period of continuous motion. "This means that the amount of electricity that could potentially be generated by the large number of cars and numerous speed bumps down the length of a single street may well be sufficient to light up the streets as well as operate traffic lights. It carries the prospect of being utilized in other areas as well," he explained. Production of Ayad and Abd Al-Gawwad's invention could be completed with a cost of USD1500 per speed bump. "Molten iron could be used so that the speed bumps are able to withstand the strain caused by the cars driving over them daily," said Abd Al-Gawwad. He goes on to say that the cost of maintenance for his contraption would be extremely low. With a yearly cost of USD100 or less, maintenance of these speed bumps is not only inexpensive but also straightforward, taking no more than 10 minutes to complete. He explained that during maintenance, it takes only four individuals to pick the speed bump up off the street. After that, the gap left behind is automatically closed up and leveled with the street by means of a hydraulics-operated seal. This allows the cars to drive along without any problems and without interrupting traffic. - Source 06/25/08 - How plastic bags could solve fuel crisis Mr Ketteringham, 75, had been working as a business consultant and came across the technology - which has been working in China for several years - through working with executives from a leading energy firm. He said: “They came across a working plant and the inventor, a Beijing professor, who had been awarded a diploma for his invention.” After engineers had checked out that the technology actually works, a market study of waste plastics in Europe was undertaken, and Mr Ketteringham was sufficiently impressed by the potential to form his company and acquire the world-wide patents for the process. He explained that all waste plastic, not just bags, could be used. Through a process operating under heat, called “catalytic cracking”, the shredded plastic was converted back into oil that could then be turned into high-grade diesel and petrol. A successful demonstration plant was operating in China. The next step was to upgrade the plant to meet European design standards. “The beauty is that the plastic bags don't have to be clean. They can be covered in grease and, in fact, a lot of plastic cement bags are used in China,” he said. One plant, costing about £5m to build, would be capable of processing all the waste plastic from an area as wide as Norwich, Yarmouth and Ipswich, and could produce about 1.5m gallons of fuel a year. Conversely the fuel could be used to generate more than three megawatts of electricity. If a local authority took up the technology it would have enough fuel to run all its vehicles as well as solving its waste plastic disposal problem. He said: “With oil prices soaring over $135 a barrel, we can produce it at $46 a barrel.” - Source 06/25/08 - Researchers create synthetic fuel from sunlight, CO2, water Sandia National Laboratories is building a fuel synthesizer in a bid to harnesses sunlight to reverse the process of combustion. The reactor would use reclaimed carbon dioxide emissions to create renewable synthetic fuel by combining the CO2 with water. "Rather than make hydrogen for people to use in fuel cells, we think it might make more sense to make a synthetic fuel that is already compatible with our existing [gasoline engine] infrastructure," said Rich Diver, inventor of the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5). "Others are working on ways to make liquid synthetic fuels from natural gas, but we are going back a step further and looking at ways of thermochemically making the precursors for synthetic fuel using solar energy, carbon dioxide and water." Unbelievable as it sounds, Diver claims that his solar-powered reactor could help clean up the planet by making internal combustion a reversible process. His team calls the project Sunshine to Petrol (S2P) and the envisioned synthesized product Liquid Solar Fuel. The conventional fuels with which we are familiar-gasoline, propane, butane, methane, natural gas-are all just various types of hydrocarbon bondings. When enough hydrogen and carbon atoms are bonded together, they become heavy enough to exist as liquid at room temperature. For example, 100 octane gasoline is just eight atoms of carbon bonded to 18 atoms of hydrogen: C8H18. "Combining hydrogen and carbon monoxide gives you a fuel which you can use similarly to natural gas; and using a few chemical processing steps, you can make methanol and other liquid fuels that you can burn in engines designed for gasoline," said Diver. - Source 06/25/08 - NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance' Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action. James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises. "We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer. - Source 06/25/08 - City inventor turns sewage sludge into ash The 83-year-old, who works out of an office at his Queenwood home, invented an eco-friendly sewage treatment plant that reduces the amount of human waste sent to landfills by 93 per cent. When sludge is put through the system the majority is converted to a fuel, which is used in a combustion process, leaving just seven per cent as ash. The system, trialled at Hamilton's plant in Pukete Rd for five years alongside the conventional operation, could reduce the amount of treated sewage going to the Hampton Downs landfill from 30 tonnes per day to just over two tonnes. The ash could then be used to make asphalt. Rob Arblaster, managing director of Enviro Energy, said the system could significantly decrease the environmental costs of waste management. "The ash from this process can go into roading and some say we can even make bricks. One guy even said we could make beer bottles out of it." Mr Arblaster said that if the new plant was run for 24 hours, the prototype was capable of processing eight to ten tonnes of waste per day. HOW IT WORKS - Digested sewage sludge is fed into a dryer that converts the sludge into fuel. The fuel is then used in a combustion process to heat the remaining particles to 815C, turning 93 per cent of the product into gas. The gas is treated through a filter system to remove any harmful qualities or odour and then released into the air. The only substance left at the end of the process is ash. - Source 06/25/08 - McCain offers $300 million dollar prize for cutting-edge battery Sen. John McCain added an unusual twist to his emerging energy agenda Monday, promising to award a $300-million prize to the inventor of a next-generation battery that could power electric vehicles. The prize amount is small relative to the billions of dollars the federal government spends on other energy industries. Today's batteries cost as much as $25,000 per car, making them far too expensive for an auto maker to turn a profit. Reducing that price is considered the battery car's main challenge. / As outlined by McCain, the prize would be paid the first innovator to develop a battery technology that “leapfrogs” existing electric car and plug-in hybrid technology, in terms of size, capacity, power, and cost. The aim is a battery technology that capable of powering motor vehicles at 30 percent of current costs. This would be a significant technical breakthrough, greatly enhancing the ability of battery-powered vehicles to compete in the marketplace. / The difference between a patent system and McCain’s idea, however, is that McCain has prescribed a very specific outcome using a very specific method, rather than allowing the best technology or the most innovative research to win out. - Source 06/23/08 - Can Congress cut gas prices? Not likely Will Congress do something to cut gas prices before you drive off to the beach this summer? Not a chance, energy experts say. The truth is that despite the flurry of bills being debated on Capitol Hill, Congress cannot control the global price of oil nor offer real help for beleaguered American drivers now or in the near future, analysts say. It's not that the politicians don't want to help. With their constituents screaming from pain at the pump, members of Congress facing re-election in November would like nothing better than to fix the problem and take credit for doing so, Ebel said. But Congress has no power over the worldwide demand for oil, which is being fueled in large part by developing nations such as India and China with an insatiable hunger for energy, said Bob O'Brien, the online stocks editor at Barrons.com. “China is undergoing this economic boom and is effectively willing to pay any price,” O'Brien said. “Just by the nature of the market, the product is going to seek out the end user that is willing to pay the most. And that dynamic is not going to change anytime soon.” - Source 06/23/08 - MIT Solar Dish That is Hot Enough to Melt Steel A parabolic collector consists of an array of mirrors focused on a singular point, which they heat to a high temperature. By placing water or another liquid at the collector, energy can be stored in the form of a phase transformation, and later harvested through a turbine generator. The key piece is the 12-foot dish, which the team assembled in several weeks. The design is exceedingly simple and inexpensive. The frame is composed of aluminum tubing and mirrors are attached to it. The results are staggering -- the completed mirror focuses enough solar energy at its focal point to melt solid steel. The energy of typical sunlight is concentrated by a factor of 1,000. This was showcased during a demonstration, in which a team member held up a board, which instantly and violently combusted, when brought within range of the focal point. By directing the dish at a more practical target -- water piped through black tubing -- steam can be flash created, offering instant means of producing energy or providing heating. Spencer Ahrens, who just received his master's in mechanical engineering from MIT, was among the designers of the dish. He and his fellow team members are serious about marketing it, and leveraging its cheap cost and easy production. They have founded a company named RawSolar. They say their design is easily mass producible and that they hope to be pumping out 1,000 of dishes in years to come. A dish the size of the RawSolar team's design costs only a third of what a larger dish would cost. - Source 06/23/08 - An Alternative to America’s Gasoline Crisis Last week saw the price of crude oil inch closer to $140/ BBL. The US consumes about 21 MBPD of crude oil of which 5,102,000 BPD of crude oil is produced domestically. The price of gasoline, currently hovering around $4.00 / gal, can be reduced by lowering demand in three ways. First, we can be drive less often and car pool. Second, we can seek alternate modes of transportation, such as public transit. Third, we can use another motor fuel as an alternative to gasoline, one that is not produced from crude oil. The alternatives to gasoline motor fuel include diesel, propane, ethanol, methanol, CNG (compressed natural gas) and hydrogen. CNG (compressed natural gas), which is 90 percent methane, has a much higher octane rating than gasoline, allowing for higher compression ratios and therefore greater efficiency in the engines that use it. By lowering the demand for gasoline by 25% the price at the pump should drop significantly. Also, displacing 25% of the US refining capacity of gasoline production, it will force multi-nationals to reformulate their crude oil intake to produce more diesel motor fuels from less costly crude types, thereby in theory lowering the price of diesel as well. Will America take up the challenge of switching to CNG vehicles? - Source 06/23/08 - Making The Environment Greener With Seed Bubbles The bicycle attachment may look like an exhaust pipe, but instead it’s a pedal-powered invention that produces seed-filled bubbles. By using wind currents, these seeds are then dispersed into the cracks and crevices in the ground. From there, the seeds then mature into vegetation. The idea was mainly for a design competition but it wouldn’t be surprising if a company decided to manufacture the bicycle attachment. The invention is truly unique and can make a difference when it comes to the environment and influencing individuals to ride a bike every once in a while. - Source 06/23/08 - Is expensive oil deglobalizing the world? A report today from CIBC World Markets says the skyrocketing cost of transportation is leading to inflation and taking away the edge that many Asian countries have had in offering cheap labour. The end result, as oil approaches $200 a barrel, is what the bank sees as a deglobalization of world markets. The report finds that the cost of shipping a standard 40-foot container from East Asia to North America's east coast has tripled since 2000 and is expected to double again as oil reaches $200 a barrel. In 2000 it cost roughly $3,000 to ship a standard container from Shanghai to North America's east coast, including inland transportation. That was when oil was $20 a barrel. Today that cost is $8,000 and at $200 a barrel it soars to $15,000. Jeff Rubin, CIBC's chief economist, said if this were translated into a tariff it would represent an 11 per cent trade tariff today on goods coming to North America, and a 15 per cent tariff when oil reaches $200. This, the bank argues, threatens decades of trade liberalization and will force some overseas manufacturing to relocate closer to home. - Source 06/23/08 - 90% Biomass to Electricity Efficiencies Direct carbon fuel cells run on solid carbon fuel and typically use solid oxide or molten carbonate electrolytes to transport ions between the electrodes. John Irvine at the University of St Andrews and colleagues made a hybrid direct carbon fuel cell containing both types of electrolyte. They found that the binary electrolyte system enhanced carbon oxidation because carbon was oxidised not only on the electrode surface but also in the carbon-electrolyte slurry... Solid carbon, which comes from various sources such as coal or plants, packs a lot of energy into a small volume, making it an attractive fuel. Irvine states that coal will be a major energy source in the future but, unless it can be converted into electricity more efficiently, will lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Fuel cells could be the answer, he says. 'Carbon fuel cells offer very high efficiency of conversion and, if implemented in the correct way, can yield two to three times the amount of energy for a given amount of coal compared to conventional thermal generation,' he explains. - Source 06/23/08 - Seismicity as the cause behind the Fall of Ancient Civilizations WHAT IF Troy was destroyed by an earthquake? What really brought down the walls of Jericho or the Colossus of Rhodes? These are some of the questions Stanford University geophysicist Amos Nur raises in "Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God" (Princeton University Press: 324 pp., $26.95), a book that posits seismicity -- rather than invaders or social forces -- as the prime dynamic behind the fall of ancient civilizations. It's hard to argue with the fact that cities like Troy and Jericho existed in seismically active territory, and when Nur engages in what we might call archaeological detective work -- looking at the position of human remains, for instance, to determine cause of death -- his book is focused and intense. "The widespread bias against recognizing the effects of earthquakes and other natural disasters in archaeology and history reflects a deeper, and disturbing, trend in the general population." But if that makes "Apocalypse" something of a cautionary tale, it's one that never quite moves beyond what might have been into the realm of what really was. - Source 06/23/08 - Seasteads - Autonomous self-governing Deep-sea Platforms An audacious new project aims to achieve a similar result by creating new competition for the world's sovereign nations. The Seasteading Institute, the brainchild of two Silicon Valley software developers, aims to develop self-sufficient deep-sea platforms that would empower individuals to break free of the cozy cartel of 190-odd world governments and start their own autonomous societies. They envision a future in which any group of people dissatisfied with its current government would be able to start a new one by purchasing some floating platforms-called seasteads-and build a new community in the open ocean. They depict government as an industry that suffers from unreasonably high barriers to entry. At present, experimenting with a new form of government requires winning an election or starting a revolution, prohibitively expensive options for small groups. As a result, they argue, even democratic governments are insufficiently responsive to their customers, the voters. The seasteaders seek to lower barriers to entry in the government business in order to create more competition and choice. A key advantage of seasteads is what Friedman calls "dynamic geography," the fact that any given seasteading unit is free to join or leave larger units within seasteading communities. Seasteading platforms would likely band together to provide common services like police protection, but with the key difference that any platform that was dissatisfied with the value it was receiving from such jurisdictions could leave them at any time. He argues that this would "move power downward," giving smaller units within society greater leverage to ensure the interests of their members are being served. - Source 06/23/08 - Canada puts brakes on electric vehicles Despite increasing local demand for zero-emissions cars and trucks and robust exports of electric vehicles, Canada will not allow them on its roads, lament manufacturers. "It's a daily embarrassment," said Ian Clifford, president of Zenn Motor Company, which builds "zero emissions no noise" vehicles in Canada for export primarily to the United States. "Even my employees can't drive to work in a Zenn. It's absurd," he said of federal and provincial rules that forbid electric cars from being driven on most Canadian roads. Clifford's frustration is aggravated by the view that Canadians are increasingly concerned about the environment and are said to be eager to drive electric vehicles in this warming climate. "We build the car in St. Jerome (Quebec) and ship them all south of the border," where 44 states allow them, and some 45,000 electric cars are in use today, he said. But Transport Canada says the vehicles made of lightweight metals and plastics are not safe to drive on Canada's open roads, and would not stand up in a collision. The regulatory agency has so far certified only five models as road-worthy, including the Zenn, and two others that are no longer in production, said Transport Canada spokeswoman Maryse Durette. According to reports, others allege political bias, noting Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government's base of support in oil-rich Alberta province. To date, only westernmost British Columbia allows low speed electric vehicles on its urban roads. - Source 06/23/08 - The Thermionic Revolution - Using Ambient Heat Energy On their Solution page, they provide a simple diagram and describe the theoretical device as; By combining rotation and points, we can produce an effective 0.15ev work function. The drawing shows how these effects can be incorporated in a design. It shows (in cross section) a red disk spinning on a 240v AC dynamo shaft. Above the disk is a ring magnet (yellow) which is connected to magnetic iron (grey). At the outer edge of the disk there is an array of sharp points. The disk gets replacement electrons via a very sharp (for low loss) secondary needle array (top of orange.) The dynamo (blue) works initially as a motor to get the disk up to design speed, then it is a dynamo. As electrons are emitted from the outer surface, a current flows through the disk. That current passes the magnets and induces a torque in the disk which then turns the dynamo. Electrons are replaced at the same rate they were emitted from the disk via the extra sharp secondary needle array (top of orange). This also transfer some heat. Heat flows to the disk from the upper and lower case. At a work function of 0.15ev, we do work of 2.4E-20 Joules per emitted electron. At an edge speed of 300m/s replacement electrons use 4.1E-26 Joules to get up to edge speed. The net work available for torque (output) is therefore 2.39E-20 Joules. Allowing for losses, we estimate output at 3Kw, for a 150cm diameter disk. - Source 06/23/08 - Coal in Your Car's Tank American-dug coal could be altered to produce clean-burning fuels for our vehicles. Here's how we could do it, and what might stop it from happening. In 1943, when Germany had virtually no sources of petroleum to fuel its Luftwaffe, U-boats, and Tiger tanks, its scientists (arguably among the best in the world at that time) didn't turn to solar and wind power. Evil does not equate to naivete. Hitler's technical advisers turned to another energy source to keep their Wehrmacht running steadily for several years without petroleum. They used the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into diesel fuel and employed the Bergius hydrogenation (or liquefaction) process to convert coal into aviation gasoline and high-quality truck and automobile gasoline. Nothing about the chemistry of coal has changed since WWII, and it is still possible to synthesize fuel from coal, which ranges from about 65 percent to 95 percent pure carbon. All that's required is hydrogen, heat, and pressure. The question arises: "Why, if the process is relatively simple, isn't more coal converted into oil?" For years, the answer to that question was cost. It was simply too expensive compared to pumping oil out of the ground, reported to cost the Saudis less than $1 per barrel. Robert Wright of the Department of Energy said in 2007 that coal-to-liquid technology would only be economical once oil prices were at $40 to $50 a barrel. Now that prices are well above that mark and will likely remain there, the problem has become the environmentalists who fear pollution above economic hardships brought on by high-priced motor fuels. - Source 06/23/08 - Political Stupidity - Petroleum Industry Antitrust Task Force A few weeks ago we witnessed a political act of such unimaginable stupidity, it is hard to not choke at the mention of it. "The US House passed, by a vote of 324 to 84, a bill that would create a new oil antitrust task force within the Department of Justice. Supporters of HR 6074, which also would give DOJ authority to sue foreign oil cartels for violating US antitrust laws, included 103 Republicans, according to its sponsor Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wis.). The new "Petroleum Industry Antitrust Task Force" would be charged with determining the existence and extent of gasoline price gouging, anticompetitive price discrimination by refiners, actions to inflate prices by constraining supplies, and possible oil price manipulation in futures markets, Kagen said." oil is a global market and the members of OPEC include the world's largest suppliers to that market. In a world of increasing demand bumping up against flattening global production, these are not the people one wants to alienate - that is, if we want to drive our cars and tractors and heat our houses with something other than broken bits of heirloom furniture. Threatening to sue them, or worse, actually suing them, is unlikely to bring a warm response. Can you imagine the oil sheiks being made to present themselves in the docket in a U.S. Court? (If Homeland Security would let them through the airports, that is). Oh, what a fine media circus that would be! Frankly, if subpoenaed, I think they'll just refuse to show. And what then? - Source 06/23/08 - V-Bine PMG Generator V-Bine Energy, the creator of the permanent magnet generator (PMG) which is attached to chimney stacks and takes advantage or horsepower created from the combination of updraft and prevailing wind around a cylinder. With blades spaning ten feet in height and cover more that 5 feet in diameter, the PMG can generate power from stack updrafts as well as prevailing winds. Green power is now a real possibility for every industrial facility across the globe. Some of the advantages of the VBINE PMG are it's adaptability to almost any installation (Factory chimneys & stacks, High rise vents, etc), its quick payback period, it can connect directly into your facility without having to send the power through the normal power grid. - Source 06/23/08 - For geoengineers, all the world's a lab What scientists wouldn't have predicted, had they been around 225 years ago, was what happened in India and North Africa. The monsoon rains dried up and, in Egypt, the Nile River's annual flood - crucial for food crops - shrank to a trickle. It's understood now that the cooler weather in the northern hemisphere altered the normal temperature pattern that produces the intense, life-sustaining cloudbursts. The result was devastating famine. They've even acquired a solid-sounding name: Geoengineering. Among the concepts: Trees genetically modified to absorb and store much more carbon than natural versions can. Oceans fertilized to produce bumper crops of algae that will also take in vast amounts of carbon. White covers to reflect heat from deserts or the melted Arctic. Most closely mimicking the Laki eruption, a variety of substances - a giant umbrella, seawater, sulphur dioxide, tiny particles, 16 trillion small disks - sent into the high atmosphere, or beyond, to block sunlight. Sodium hydroxide to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air. The concept harks back to the 1930s invention of seeding clouds with silver iodide to produce rain. Even on the small scale it was used, the technique occasionally produced fatal floods. Now, though, we're talking about global peril and plans of unprecedented scope and imagination to avert it. Most observers discuss them with a mixture of fear and fascination. It's assumed any attempt to manipulate the climate would bring unpredicted consequences. Ocean fertilization and, above all, erecting sunscreens are the most uncertain. - Source 06/23/08 - Dragon Skin - Best Body Armour Ever, but the Army Won’t Buy It Dragon Skin is the most amazing body armour. Even a grenade can’t go through it! In a test for the History Channel’s military show, “Mail Call”, the vest repelled nine rounds of pointed steel ammunition from an AK-47 and 35 rounds of 9 mm, all fired into a 10-by-12-inch configuration on the vest. In “Test Lab”, also on the History Channel, the vest withstood a total of 120 rounds, fired from both an AK-47 (7.62 × 39 mm) and MP5 (9 x 19 mm). In another demonstration on the Discovery Channel series “Future Weapons”, a Dragon Skin vest withstood numerous rounds from an AK-47, an MP5, and an M4 carbine (5.56 x 45 mm), and a point-blank detonation of an M67 grenade. While the vest was heavily damaged (mainly by the grenade), there was no penetration of the actual armor. On December 7, 2006 a demonstrational shoot for the following departments took place on a 10? x 12? SOV-2000 Level III panel: Saint Charles Parish Sheriff’s SWAT, Saint John’s Parish Sheriff’s SWAT, Gretna PD, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s SWAT, LaCruz Parish Sheriff’s SWAT, Ascension Parish Sheriff’s SWAT, Coast Guard Investigative Services, US Navy. A total of 17 rounds was fired into the panel without penetration. * 3 @ 7.62×51mm Federal Match * 3 @ 7.62×39mm Military Ball * 3 @ 5.56×45mm M193 Ball * 3 @ 5.56×45mm M193 Ball at 45 degrees * 2 @ 5.56×45mm M855 Green Tip * 2 @ 5.56×45mm Bonded M193 * 1 @ 7.62×51mm Federal Bonded. So why does the Army refuse military men and women to wear this? Even if they purchase it themselves? - Source 06/23/08 - United Airlines to require minimum stays Starting Oct. 6, most United fares will require a one- to three-night or weekend-night minimum stay, spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said. The new rules, which apply to nearly every ticket, are bound to be unpopular with business travelers who prefer to catch a flight out early in the morning so they can make it back home in time for dinner. Major carriers scrapped most minimum-stay rules - put in place largely to discourage big-budget corporate travelers from snatching up the cheapest seats - years ago, although a number of airlines have been tightening up restrictions and tacking on fees in recent months as the price of fuel has soared. - Source 06/23/08 - The History Before History, Part I In June of 1968, amateur fossil collector William J. Meister found a rock 2 inches thick in Antelope Spring, Utah. With a blow of his hammer, he exposed the fossil of a human footprint. But this footprint had a special feature-a squashed trilobite. It wasn't long before the news spread across the world, and several investigators made their way to Antelope Spring, finding more marks made by modern-style footwear in a geological stratum corresponding to extremely remote ages. What strange joke is seemingly being played on history? In 1852 a giant rock mass in Dorchester, Massachusetts, was dynamited. After the explosion, workers found a curious metallic artifact among the debris, which was broken in two. Upon joining the two pieces together, they revealed a vessel in the shape of a bell with a base of 6.5 inches and height of 4.5 inches. Later they discovered that the vessel was made from a silver alloy. Curiously, this artifact, seemingly constructed with a high level of technology, appears to have been trapped in the rock while it was forming several millions years ago-when humans did not even exist. Another archeological treasure hidden in a carbon deposit was found in 1891 by S.W. Culp, a woman from Illinois. While she was extracting the black material, she accidentally broke a fragment, and a very thin gold chain was knocked loose. It had been lodged inside a bow-shaped cavity in the carbon. An impression of a perfect human hand (with fingernail marks) was discovered in 110-million-year-old limestone in Glen Rose, Texas; a 100-million year-old petrified finger (fossil identified as DM93-083), which had its bone structure revealed through radiography, was found on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada; there is the well-known discovery of giant human footprints beside those of a dinosaur in Rìo Paluxy, Texas; and there are many more. The apparent soundness of our current theories is shaken each time an "impossible fossil" comes to light. - Source 06/23/08 - The 3,000 Mile Oil Change Myth According to a recent study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board, 73 percent of California drivers change their oil more frequently than required. This same scenario no doubt repeats itself across the country. Besides wasting money, this translates into unnecessary consumption of $100-a-barrel oil, much of it imported. It’s been a misconception for years that engine oil should be changed every 3000 miles, even though most auto manufacturers now recommend oil changes at 5,000, 7,000, or even 10,000 mile intervals under normal driving conditions. Greatly improved oils, including synthetic oils, coupled with better engines mean longer spans between oil changes without harming an engine. The 3000 mile interval is a carryover from days when engines used single-grade, non-detergent oils. - Source 06/23/08 - Broadstar’s AeroCam Breaks the Wind-Watt Barrier Constructed to spin on a horizontal axis, the micro-turbine’s multiple aerodynamic blades cut a profile similar to a water wheel and allow it to intuitively track the path of the wind as it rotates. The turbine is the industry’s first to shatter the $1/watt cost barrier, and Broadstar aims to make its AeroCam turbines a go-to option for rural, urban, and wind farm in-fill applications. The AeroCam’s unique design allows Broadstar to manufacture, transport, and install, and maintain it at lower costs than conventional turbines. A 250kW system will retail for $250,000, making it the world’s first turbine to break the $1/watt cost barrier. The AeroCam is designed to operate smoothly in wind-speeds from 4-80 mph, and these low rotational speeds mean that it produces a negligible amount of noise. - Source 06/23/08 - Ice core analysis shows drastic climate change Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation. The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years, said the study authors. - Source 06/21/08 - Aquafairy and the Source for the GenePax WaterCar Lipstick-Sized Fuel Cell for Mobile Phones - Using Pure Iron? Aquafairy developed the generation cell and hydrogen generator. The firm was established on June 30, 2006 by a technician involved in developing fuel cells at Nitto Denko Corp. He has worked on generation cells since 2002 and hydrogen generators since 2004, beginning joint development with NTT DoCoMo about one year ago. Details of the hydrogen generator have not been disclosed, but in October 2004 Nitto Denko filed for a patent on a method of generating hydrogen using pure iron made by reducing hydrogen oxide into pure iron, pressed into a porous shape. The new development is thought to use this pure iron. The developed fuel cell can turn its water supply on and off to match power on/off, and power generation is stable regardless of altitude. The problematic output fluctuations of DMFCs can be ignored, said NTT DoCoMo, because of the high 2W output. This means that the compensatory capacitors and other components are no longer required, so that a standard electrical circuit can be used. - Source / Docomo, Aquafairy develop water-powered fuel cell - Based on thin-film power unit technology from Aquafairy (Osaka, Japan), the polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) contains 10 cc of water and a hydrogen-producing catalyst. It is connected using a power unit that includes an anode, solid electrolyte and a cathode. In the fuel cartridge, water is injected onto the catalyst to generate pure hydrogen which is then channeled to the anode in the power unit. There, the hydrogen separates into H+ ions and electrons. The electrons flow from the anode to the cathode through an external circuit, producing electricity. The hydrogen ions move through the solid electrolyte to the cathode and combine with oxygen to produce water. - Source 06/21/08 - Why Oil Prices Skyrocketed Global consumption is spiking. An average of 86 million barrels of oil are guzzled per day across the globe, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, up from 74 million barrels 10 years ago. World demand for oil is expected to increase by 37 percent to a staggering 118 million barrels per day by 2030, the agency estimates. Assuming, that is, there's enough to go around. By William Fisher's reckoning, rising oil prices are more likely due to an old-fashioned case of supply and demand - as well as the faltering U.S. dollar. "We've just had a red-hot increase in demand in the emerging economies of Asia, particularly China and India," he said. "The other contributor is the weakening value of the dollar compared with the Euro, since oil is priced and sold in dollars." A third offender: commodity speculation. "When you see a commodity like oil that will vary by 2 to 3 percent of its value in a day's time, you suspect that there's some speculation that's going on," Fisher said. "And I'm not saying it's a nasty word - people speculate in margins all the time - but that would, in my view, have some secondary role." David Cole, chairman of the non-profit Center for Automotive Research says, "We have failed to develop our resources due to the inability of Congress to permit drilling in high-probability petroleum regions," he said, arguing that the United States has had an "absurd energy policy" for years. "The only thing Congress has done over the years is promote the development of corn ethanol, which doesn't make any sense because it has very low energy potential," Cole said. "I think our broad energy capability is still very substantial, but we really need to bridge the gap between our existing resources and alternative technologies, including cellulosic biofuels and lithium batteries." - Source 06/21/08 - Liquid Gold will also oil the wheels of invention Oil is the new gold. It's the new gold because the black stuff has become a hedge against the dollar, a new asset class of its own. Yergin also says the price of oil is close to reaching what he calls its "break-point". This is when the price - the latest is $136 a barrel - triggers a sea-change in attitudes from governments, to car-makers to consumers. He reckons it won't be long before serious money goes into alternative energy sources and car-makers stop making vehicles like the Hummer completely. Consumers, he notes, are already filling their tanks with the same care as they would if petrol were, in fact, liquid gold. Yergin's views are always worth listening to; he is one of the world's smartest gurus on oil and author of the Pulitzer-winning book, The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. Yergin won't predict, but he will say that the economic consequences would be too disastrous to contemplate if oil hit $250. But he agrees that we are in the middle of the biggest oil price crisis for more than 30 years and that the biggest driver to the recent spikes in the oil price is the weakening dollar. That's why financial investors have been pouring into oil. Nor has the world run out of oil. We have plenty left, certainly for another 100 years: estimates suggest that, by 2010, capacity could grow by 16 million barrels a day to over 100 million, a 20 per cent rise in capacity which should meet projected demand. But much of this oil needs heavy investment because of the cost of drilling deep down into the oceans. Yergin also puts this latest crisis into a historical context: it's not the first time the world thinks it has run out of oil. More like the fifth. The first oil crash was in the 1880s, followed by another after the First World War - a catalyst for putting together Iraq - then in the 1970s and again in the mid-1980s. This probably won't be the last crisis either. - Source 06/21/08 - BTU FROM THE BARN Bryan Ramlow (a former IBM engineer from Poynette, Wisconsin) has developed a new heating layout that's able to successfully harness bovine heat and use it-sans humidity, mess, or odor-to warm a whole house! Bryan, who had always been interested in new energy-efficient ways to transfer heat, first got the inspiration for what he eventually titled "Cowpower" about five years ago ... when, on a bitterly cold day, he tromped out to fix a farmer's brokendown milk cooler. While laboring in the cowfilled building, Ramlow couldn't help noticing that-even with some of the windows open-the barn was one heck of a lot warmer than the wintry outdoors. It wasn't long before the inventive engineer realized that, since a single cow gives off 3,500-4,000 BTU an hour, a mere 15 milkers could provide sufficient excess warmth to heat a standard 2,000-square-foot home. Ramlow then devised a prototype Cowpower system . . . but he tested the unit for a year before he was satisfied enough to put it on the market. Bryan's invention can be described as operating like a refrigerator in reverse (see the diagram below). A fan blows the 40° to 50°F air from a milk barn across a set of heat absorbers installed in that building. (Since the moisture in this air is condensed by these absorbers-and then drained off into a gutter outside the barn-the system dehumidifies the cows' environment.) Next, the captured thermal energy is transferred into a pipe carrying Freon gas. While still at the barn, this gas is pumped through a twin set of compressors and put under enough pressure to raise its temperature to over 200°F. The superheated Freon is then pumped underground through sealed copper tubing to a heat exchanger in the house. Finally, circulated home air-blown over the hot coils in the exchanger-absorbs the warmth and is then routed throughout the building. - Source 06/21/08 - Aust to lose home-grown car technology after Budget program axing One company from northern New South Wales has said it intended to apply for $5 million to help it develop a hybrid drive system for trucks. Its chairman says that without the funding, the company will have to be wound up. And now the Federal Opposition is accusing the Government of getting its priorities wrong, when it has axed this program while giving Toyota a $35 million grant. Chris Marshall is the company's chief engineer. "It's brought together a bunch of mature components which are already out in the industry - being hydraulics systems, and assembled in such a fashion that it's provided a method by which you can capture the normally wasted braking energy and then put that captured energy back in drive line," he said. "When the vehicle accelerates ... when you go to accelerate off from a set of stopped lights, rather than the engine providing 100 per cent of the power, it might only provide 80 or maybe even 70 per cent of the power and that is where you get your fuel savings. "In an urban, 7.5 tonne vehicle, the savings will be in the order of 20 to 30 per cent. Now on another perspective, that relates to approximately a 50 cents per litre saving." But like many new businesses, keeping money flowing has been a big challenge, so the company turned to a Federal Government program of so-called Commercial Ready grants, just months before the program was axed in the Federal Budget. When the Commercial Ready grant was axed, of course the venture capitalists came back and said "Oh, now we're going to reassess what we were going to invest", ie, the $7.5 million. So all of a sudden it put everything back in jeopardy again," said Mr Marshall. The directors of Permo-Drive are now preparing to wind-up the company, which might see the technology leave Australia. Instead, $35 million has been handed to Toyota to manufacture existing technology in Australia. At the time of the announcement, Toyota's president Katsuaki Watanabe said he did not know how the company would use the money. - Source 06/21/08 - Northrop Grumman To Develop Brain-Wave Binoculars "An AP wire reports that DARPA has granted a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop 'brainwave' binoculars. The binoculars will be built into a helmet, which will include EEG electrodes that will monitor the wearer's brain activity for patterns consistent with object identification/recognition. From what I can gather, the idea is that when you look at a far-off or partially obscured object without noticing it, your subconscious probably did notice it and tried, unsuccessfully, to identify it. The EEG in these binoculars would pick up on that kind of subconscious activity and draw the wearer's attention to the object in question. The goal is that these binoculars would be able to pick up on any object anywhere in the wearer's field of view, where a person can only pick up on things that he focuses both his eyes and his attention on. This delves into some very interesting territory: it would be an electronic device that uses human eyes to collect data, and even uses a human brain to partially process the data. Since it also passes its results back to the human providing the data and initial processing, it essentially adds a second processing loop in parallel to the wearer's visual system." - Source 06/21/08 - $500 Two Terabyte Hard Drive This drive is one in a series called “MyBook,” by Western Digital. We have the “Studio Edition II” version, which comes with either one or two terabytes ofWestern Digital Mybook capacity. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes; a gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. Two terabytes is enough storage to hold more than 400 standard DVDs. That’s a pretty big film library that could sit there in one brushed aluminum case. It will take years for flash memory drives to match this kind of capacity, and longer still before they match it for the price. We used to be in awe of reaching a benchmark of paying one dollar for a gigabyte of storage. That was pretty impressive; it meant you could store 200 million words for a dollar. But we found the drive for $500 at NewEgg.com. This works out to just 25 cents a gigabyte. Now, that’s cheap. Aside from its huge storage capacity, we liked three more things about this drive: One was the heavy duty case, and another was that it required no drivers. Just plug it into a Mac or Windows computer and the drive was recognized and ready to go. The third good thing was that the back of the drive had four connection ports, two for fire-wire, one for USB and one for eSATA. Suffice it to say that it works with computers that have special eSATA sockets and permits several disk drives to be chained in series and yet still provide nearly instant access to each. - Source 06/21/08 - Electronic Transaction Reporting Slipped Into Senate Bill "The Senate mortgage bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (who was the recipient of a sweetheart deal on his mortgage from Countrywide, one of the beneficiaries of the bill) includes an attempt to sneak into law a requirement that all electronic payment processors send detailed transaction data to the federal government. The proposed law contains an exception for businesses with fewer than 200 transactions or a total value less than $10,000. Quoting FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey (former House majority leader) from the article: 'This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking.'" - Source 06/21/08 - Best Way To Store Digital Video For 20 Years "My kid is now 1 year old and I already have 100G of digital video (stored on DVDs, DVD quality) and photos. How should I store it so that it's still readable 10 to 20 years from now? Will DVDs stil be around, and readable, 10 years from now? Should I plan for technology changes every 5 to 10 years (DVD->Blue-ray->whatever)? Is optical storage better, or should I try to use hard drives (making technology changes automatic)? And, if the answer is optical, how do you store optical disks so that they last?" / People who say HDD have their heads in the sand. 20 years. Think about that. 1988. SCSI-1 40 pins. Nearing the end of MFM/RLE. Parallel. People who say CDs and DVDs again have their heads in the sand. That's the Floppy Era. The best format IMHO is the "current" format. DVDs + HDDs along with a live copy on your computer. DVDs and HDDs should be at two of your friend's houses. 5-10 years later, once one of the formats is obsolete (EXT3 is now EXT8, DVDs are now expensive again in drug stores), it's time to copy these to the new "current" format, and repeat the process. / Unfortunately there isn't a guarantee on any technology. CD/DVDs were supposed to last 100 years until that pesky mold and poor quality make them unsuitable for long term storage. HD-DVD was promising until it lost the format wars. HDs reliability varies with manufacturer and model. My suggestion is to back it up every 5 - 10 years onto new media to keep ahead of the curve. It's more work but you'll make sure it gets saved. - Source 06/21/08 - Motion Sensing Light-bulb socket It’s a very simple system to use as the motion sensor attaches directly to the light bulb. To set it up all you have to do is screw the motion-sensor into the light socket, then plug the light bulb into the motion sensor! You then don’t need to control the lights with light switches anymore as the fixture does it for you! The sensor is very well designed and appears just like a normal fixture. It features a full 360° field-of-view so no matter where you enter the room from you should be automatically greeted by light. It also has a 12' range so it could cover most sized rooms. The light then stays on for 4 minutes after it detects the last motion. The system is very versatile as it can support bulbs anywhere from 25W to 100W. It also doesn’t take up much space measuring 3? by 4?. This neat fixture is available for just $29.74 from Smart Home. - Source 06/21/08 - US drivers risk their lives filling tanks with Mexican fuel U.S. motorists are risking rampant drug violence in Mexico to drive over the border and fill their tanks with cheap Mexican fuel, some even coming to blows over gas shortages and long queues. The gap between Mexico's subsidized gasoline and record U.S. prices has made it well worth making the trip, and U.S. drivers are even shrugging off the dangers of Mexico's drug war which sees almost daily shootings in border towns. - Source 06/21/08 - Loc8tor Offers New Way To Find Lost Objects The concept is not new. The Sharper Image released their famous Now You Can Find It device years ago. However, Loc8tor takes the technology a little further with the advent on an LCD screen. This allows for a better user GUI interface, and also allows for a new mode. From Loc8tor's site: "In Alert mode an invisible safety zone can be set up around the Loc8tor (plus) alerting you with audio-visual and vibration alarms should tagged items move out of the set boundary." This could be great for items you'd be afraid would get thrown out in the trash. Just let it alert you if the item leaves the house. Or better yet, tag your kids at night. The full package runs for 99 pounds (about $185). - Source 06/21/08 - Duke professors challenge term 'miles per gallon' Researchers with Duke's Fuqua School of Business say that posting a vehicle's fuel efficiency in "gallons per mile" rather than "miles per gallon" would help motorists make better decisions when buying a new car. For example, most people said an increase from 34 to 50 mpg saved more gas over 10,000 miles than an increase from 18 to 28 mpg, even though the latter saves twice as much gas, according to the Duke press release. (Going from 34 to 50 mpg saves 94 gallons; but going from 18 to 28 mpg saves 198 gallons). These mistaken impressions were corrected, however, when participants were presented with fuel efficiency expressed in gallons used per 100 miles. Viewed this way, 18 mpg becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 mpg is 3.6 gallons per 100 miles -- an $8 difference today. - Source 06/21/08 - Bluetooth Telemedical bracelet Exmovere has developed a Web-based, Bluetooth-enabled biosensor wristwatch service for medical supervision of the elderly. The Exmocare wristwatch monitors one's pulse rate, heart rate variability and skin conductance. It also monitors the wearer's level of activity via built-in accelerometer to determine whether the subject is active, inactive or sedentary. With user-configurable alerts, it sends information to families and care providers by e-mail, SMS, or instant message. - Source 06/21/08 - Avoid fuel-saving gadgets: Competition Bureau Consumers should avoid purchasing products purporting to be fuel-saving devices, Canada's competition watchdog says. Claims that a product will boost fuel efficiency and reduce emissions are hollow, the Competition Bureau said Thursday, noting most such claims are unproven. In the United States, a probe of more than 100 such devices conducted by federal Environmental Protection Agency found the claims were false. The U.S. agency said in recent years it has taken action for making false claims against companies including Econopro, Fuel Saver Pro and Platinum Vapour Injector. - Source 06/19/08 - Double Your Fuel Mileage? Per Tank of Gas??? - Video Add air to tires for correct pressure. Remove excess weight from truck and inside. Changed oil to low friction synthetic. Changed spark plugs, spark plug wires and air filter. Turn off car when idling more than 30 seconds. Turn off air conditioning if climate allows. 2 ounces pure Acetone in 10 Gallons doubled gas mileage. / 06/21/08 Update thanks to David - Snopes Refutation - Although various claims have been made about acetone improving gas mileage by 25% or 30%, those avowals never seem to hold up to independent scrutiny: properly controlled experiments designed to measure the ballyhooed improvement fail to recognize any significant change. Curious motorists working in less controlled settings do at times seem to note an acetone-assisted improvement, yet their results are likely better chalked up to careless measurement or miscalculation, as their findings can't be reproduced in the lab. Confusing matters further is the issue that determining the effect of anything upon gasoline mileage is a bit more difficult to work out than it would seem, beause so many different factors can affect the results. The same amount of fuel will produce different gas mileages on different days, depending upon variables such as the type of automobile, the weather conditions, whether the car's air conditioning was running, how fast the vehicle was driven, etc. Eliminating the effects of each of these factors from the computation is generally beyond the abilities of the average car owner with a passing interest in knowing how many miles to the gallon his pride and joy is getting. Other issues to consider, such as the harm that the solvent can work on vehicles. Acetone is corrosive, which means it can eat away at rubber components such as gaskets and O-rings, a particularly bad result for cars with rubber hoses in their fuel lines. - Source 06/19/08 - GenePax water car Patent Info Genepax Co., Ltd. revealed an epoch-making technology "Water Energy System (WES)" which is capable of generating electric power from water. WES stably generates electric power with no aid of any external energy and without any emission of green house gas, e.g., carbon dioxide and methane. The electricity generation module and the prototype generator system, which are based on the WES technology, were disclosed on June 12, 2008, in Osaka. The company has not disclosed the details of the WES technology. The company said that "Genepax's propriety technologies are packed in the MEA of the WES", and also said that the principle of "WES resembles that of the battery charger for mobile phones, developed by Aquafairy Corporation, which is now in cooperation with NTT DoCoMo for its development". / System Animation Illustrating Operation - 1) Publication number: 2006-244714 - WATER ENERGY SYSTEM - The water energy system 1 has a cell in which a fuel electrode 3 and an oxygen electrode 4 are faced with each other through a catalyst 2 same as a general fuel cell. The fuel electrode 3 is formed by carrying platinum on a sintered body of fine powder of zeolite, coral sand, and carbon black, the oxygen electrode 4 is formed by carrying ruthenium on the sintered body of fine powder of zeolite and carbon black. Electric power is generated under normal temperature by supplying pure water 5 to the fuel electrode 3 and air to the oxygen electrode 4. / 2) Publication number: 2007-157405 - POWER GENERATION MODULE, POWER GENERATOR, AND POWER GENERATION SYSTEM - The power generation module 4 of a power generation system is formed by laminating gaskets 43, partition plates 44, and current collector plates 45 at both sides of an electrode assembly 42 as a center, between a pair of clamp plates 41. Pure water is supplied to an anode-side electrode plate 47 from a pure water supply groove provided on the surface of the partition plate through pure water supply holes 41c to 45c from outside of the clamp plate 41, and air taken in from an air intake formed at outer peripheral end surface of the separation plate is supplied to a cathode-side electrode 48 from an air supply groove provided on another surface thereof. A desired power generation capacity can be obtained by adding and connecting in series electrode joint bodies 42 and partition plates 44. - Source 06/19/08 - Real Life Iron Man Takes to The Skies in 2005! - Video This happened in October of 2005. A man jumps from a hot-air balloon and dives into the world record's book for being the first person to strap miniature rockets to his legs and maintain an altitude of over 2000 meters for more than 30 seconds. He flies like a rocket without wings. - Source 06/19/08 - New Invention Offers Easy Solution to Food Shortages: Portable Farms(TM) Portable Farms(TM) LLC announces the availability of their new invention, Portable Farms(TM) which offers an easy way to grow 100 pounds of home-grown fish and 400 heads of lettuce (or other table vegetables) per year in a small 6 foot x 8 foot space. Units can be scaled to feed several families, a small neighborhood, or an entire village. The fish and table vegetables can be eaten or sold locally to stores or restaurants. A Portable Farm(TM): * Is affordable and pays for itself * Requires only minimal upkeep (less than five minutes a day) * Requires only minimal space * No soil, no watering, no weeding, no fertilizers or pesticides, no hand feeding fish * Can be Solar Powered and fully automated * Offers a wide variety of choices of table vegetables * Raises Tilapia and catfish (both herbivores -- vegetarian fish) which can be raised on a vegetable protein plant (duckweed or algae). Portable Farms(TM) grows: Lettuce, basil, peppers, sage, parsley, cilantro and most herbs Flowering plants: tomatoes, strawberries, peas, squash, eggplants Colorful flowers Hybrid Tilapia or catfish, or other fish depending on availability and local regulations. For more information: http://www.portablefarms.com - Source 06/19/08 - Sun Spot Cycles Impact on Crop Yields, Energy Use and Weather Patterns Solar activity data appears to indicate that over the last century the number of sunspots rose in number and intensity. At the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. In theory, the more sunspots the more energy should reach the earth. Some experts argue that greenhouse gasses have enhanced the warming effect, others argue greenhouse gasses have had a minor impact. None-the-less solar activity and temperature appear to correlate. Although the relationship between causation and correlation is an issue, global temperatures over the last 60 years have been very warm compared to historical norms. Donald Coxe pointed out that we are at the low-point of the 11 year solar cycle (see chart above) - at the end of solar cycle 23 and at the start of solar cycle 24. Sunspot activity was expected to pick up significantly the last few months, with experts concerned about the impact of the powerful bursts of radiation on satellites, the electrical grid, and telecommunications systems. These historical periods of solar inactivity - dubbed the Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum after the astrologists who studied them - coincided with an irregular periods of rapid climate shifts. The climate cycles brought intensely cold winters, although periodically intense summer heat waves would also appear. The Maunder cycle is often referred to as the "Little Ice Age" - but climate experts claim the period is punctuated by both cold weather and rapid climate shifts. These periods of low solar activity were also periods of sustained weather driven crop failures. Coxe notes that solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and the cold weather - but the exact mechanism remains elusive. The ‘sunspot gap' from 1645 to 1715 - corresponding with the Little Ice Age. - Source 06/19/08 - Invention brings wind energy home This 36-inch diameter WindTronics wind turbine -- which would retail for about $2,000 -- could supplement up to 20 percent of the electricity used in a typical house. It's competitor retails for about $15,000. The specifics and details of the "wind turbine in a box" are not being released as commercialization continues. E-Net has U.S. patents pending on the turbine technology that Mahawili describes as "gearless." The lack of a traditional gear box reduces friction and allows the WindTronics turbine to begin generating power at 3 mph of wind speed. Standard wind turbine technology allows power to be generated above 8 mph and cuts off when winds climb 30 mph or more. WindTronics has no upper wind speed restrictions. "Our goal is to supply power in the 3-15 mph wind range; we can accomplish that," Adams said. "We want to be less than $2,000 per unit. We know we are there right now." An initial 200-watt, 36-inch diameter WindTronics unit will drive the costs down to where wind generation becomes economically competitive with utility-provided power, Mahawili said. A typical house needs 1.2-kilowatts of power, he said. A competitor likely will be Cascade Engineering in Grand Rapids, which is putting one of its 1.5-kilowatt Swift Turbines on the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts in Muskegon as a demonstration project. The Swift unit is retailing for about $15,000. The WindTronics 200-watt unit will take care of about 10 percent to 20 percent of a normal residential home's electrical needs. The EarthTronics turbines could be used to charge a battery or be converted to integrate into a home's electrical system. The units will need an electrician for installation, Adams said. - Source 06/19/08 - How to Block Cellphone Spam “According to Wikipedia, this sleazy practice is described as ‘mobile spamming, SMS spam or SpaSMS, but is most frequently referred to as m-spam.’ “It’s actually far worse than regular e-mail spam, for three reasons. First, you generally can’t delete it without opening it first. “Second, you have to pay for it. (And, of course, the senders pay nothing, since they can send text messages from a computer’s e-mail program for nothing.) “Third, there’s no way to stop it. You can’t install an anti-SMS spam program on your cellphone. Shortly thereafter, I heard from an AT&T representative who revealed the presence of an astonishing little-known cellular feature: you can block cellular spam. - Source 06/19/08 - Body's Own Immune Cells Whack Late-Stage Tumor In what could be a breakthrough in cancer therapy, researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine today that they succeeded in bolstering a patient's immune system enough to wipe out late-stage malignant tumors on its own. The scientists say the successful experiment could pave the way for new treatments of advanced cancer that spare patients the side effects of chemotherapy, which kills healthy as well as malignant cells. - Source 06/19/08 - FDA cracks down on 'cancer cures' The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on teas, supplements, creams and other products that falsely claim to cure, treat or prevent cancer even though they are not agency-approved drugs. All are available for sale on the Internet. The agency has sent 25 warning letters to companies and individuals marketing these products, FDA officials said Tuesday. Twenty-three of the letters went to domestic companies and two to foreign individuals. FDA officials said the statements made about these products are dangerous because they could prevent a patient from seeking proper treatment for cancer. They could also harm a cancer patient by interacting with other drugs the patient is taking. One product's Web site had a testimonial claiming it had cured a patient's skin cancer in three days, according to one of the letters. The ingredients of these unproven treatments include bloodroot, shark cartilage, coral calcium, cesium, ellagic acid, and a variety of mushrooms among other products. - Source 06/19/08 - The Mystery of Mass Extinctions Is No Longer Murky Ebb and flow of the sea is the primary cause of the world's mass extinctions over the past 500 million years. Since the advent of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago, scientists think there may have been as many as 23 mass extinction events, many involving simple forms of life such as single-celled microorganisms. Over the past 540 million years, there have been five well-documented mass extinctions, primarily of marine plants and animals, with as many as 75-95 percent of species lost. For the most part, scientists have been unable to pin down the causes of such dramatic events. In the case of the demise of the dinosaurs, scientists have a smoking gun, an impact crater that suggests dinosaurs were wiped out as the result of a large asteroid crashing into the planet. The new Wisconsin study, Peters says, does not preclude other influences on extinction such as physical events like volcanic eruptions or killer asteroids, or biological influences such as disease and competition among species. - Source 06/19/08 - Drug attacks cause of diarrhea Dr. Ferid Murad has led a team that has found a drug compound that appears to intervene at the molecular level, stopping E. coli before it can irritate the linings of the intestines to secrete excess fluid. The illness is responsible for one of every six children's deaths in the developing world, said Dr. Peter Salama, chief of health for the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF. "It's really one of the five major causes of death that we deal with," he said. The drug is notable because it appears to treat the cause of diarrhea rather than just addressing its symptoms. But it has to be cheap Murad, who is seeking funding to continue developing the drug, says it also has potential to treat traveler's diarrhea, commonly caused by E. coli. The funds are needed to synthesize enough of the drug to conduct several rounds of human clinical trials to prove that it works. - Source 06/19/08 - Donations for Christianity - Video Incredible claims made in broadcasts by TV preachers to solicit funds. They have no problem asking for 1000 or more dollars as seeds of faith, assuring their viewers they will receive 'a miracle'. One of them even says "May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth (if I've lied)." Wish that were so. - Source 06/19/08 - Convert Your Hybrid into a Plug-In Do you have an extra $10,000 lying around that you don’t know what to do with? This fall, A123Systems is going to make their Hymotion L5 Conversion Kit available to the general public. That means that the hybrid car that you already have can be converted into a plug-in. Right now, you can go to their website and put down a deposit so you can have your kit shipped to you when they are officially released. The kit was made with the Toyota Prius in mind. With the Hymotion L5 Conversion Kit, that gas mileage can be doubled to 100 mpg. The kit is supposed to install within three or four hours if you choose to do it yourself. The kit can even convert some non hybrid vehicles into plug-ins. Even though the kit was made with the Prius in mind, it works with a multitude of different vehicles, allowing it to penetrate deep into the market. - Source 06/19/08 - Chinese IFO The aircraft is 1.2 metres (four feet) in diameter and is able to take off and land vertically and hover at an altitude of up to 1,000 metres (yards), Xinhua news agency said. The unmanned disc is driven by a propeller and can be controlled remotely or sent on a preset flight path, it said. Its top speed is 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, it added. It took the Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft Co Ltd 12 years and 28 million yuan (4.1 million dollars) to develop the prototype craft. - Source 06/19/08 - In Russia, sometimes it rains cement "A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region ... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft)," police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti. Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture. - Source 06/17/08 - Inventor’s cleaner power holds hope for Welsh coal Alex Wormser of Boston yesterday told an environmental conference that his prototype for a coal-fired power station combined significantly lower carbon emissions with being more economical to build and run. He told the Western Mail: “I’m following a couple of major trends that have been identified in the US. One has to do with hybrid technology, which converts the majority of the coal to gas to run a turbine, with the residual ‘char’ being combusted to produce steam. “This has been identified as the most efficient and the lowest cost means of converting coal into gas. “To make it cheaper, we’re adding one important feature to it - a new technique called warm gas clean-up, which enables us to clean up the emissions without having to bring it to a low temperature. That’s really the key to our savings. “What we’ve basically done is to build on the work that’s been done and combined the clean-up technology with the other technology which is now considered standard.” Mr Wormser said his new kind of power station would be ready for demonstration in three years. It will be possible to convert existing power stations by adding a new section to them. He said: “The capital cost of one of our plants will be around $1,000 a kilowatt, which is about 30% less than the next cheapest way to make electricity. It’s the low capital cost that’s the key to making electricity cheaper. “A key part also is if you retro- fit existing plants, then you’re making them much more efficient.” - Source 06/17/08 - Prototype Ford Escape Plug-in Hybrid: 88 MPG on 85% Ethanol Ford has delivered a plug-in hybrid electric flex-fuel Escape to the DOE to join its test fleet of other PHEVs currently undergoing research and testing. The vehicle is equipped with a 10 kilowatt lithium ion battery that can take it up to 30 miles at speeds under 40 mph before needing to fire up its fuel-fed hybrid-electric engine. After that, the hybrid-electric engine kicks in and can deliver a fuel economy of 88 mpg in the city and 50 mpg on the highway when using E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend). This means that for most people in the US, they would only have to use fuel in this vehicle once or twice a week with the rest of their driving needs covered by the battery. According to Ford, this is the first ever flex-fuel PHEV capable of running on E85. - Source 06/17/08 - OriginOil Files Patent for Breakthrough Algae Oil Extraction Technique The patent application, “Lysing and Extraction System for Microorganisms,” details OriginOil's invention of a method to extract the oil from algae with high energy efficiency, without requiring the use of chemical solvents. The process of breaking down algae cells to release oil, known as lysing, has long represented a challenge for the algae-to-oil industry. Algae cell walls are difficult to break down. Mechanical methods are energy-intensive and often ineffective, and commonly-used chemical solvents such as benzene, ether or hexane are toxic and require special handling. Such practices increase operating costs and make it harder to site algae production systems. OriginOil’s latest invention builds on the company’s first patent, Quantum Fracturing™, in which ultrasound from intense fluid fracturing breaks down algae cells much in the same way a high-frequency sound wave breaks glass. In the new patent filing, the flowing algae biomass is first sent through a shielded wave guide system where it receives low-wattage, frequency-tuned microwave bursts, breaking the cell walls. Quantum Fracturing is then applied to these pre-cracked cells to complete the oil extraction. The result is a system that makes low-energy and environmentally-safe algae oil production a reality. - Source 06/17/08 - Nano-turbine is a generator, data-storage medium and molecular printer Similarly, when electrons move through the nanotube turbine, they tend to bounce off its spiral arrangement of carbon rings in a particular direction. This redirects the electrons into a spiral flow, and causes the tube to rotate in the opposite direction... The Lancaster researchers say their motor could be used to pump atoms and molecules through the spinning middle tube. Multiple pumps could precisely control a chemical reaction, driving atoms in a pattern to engineer new molecules. "It's like a nanoscale inkjet printer," says Lambert. Atoms pumped through the motor could also be used to represent digital data, with an array of motors shuttling atoms between the 1 and 0 ends of the middle tube to store or process information. This method could store data in a space about 10 times smaller than today's state-of-the-art commercial systems, says Lambert. - Source 06/17/08 - 300mph Maglev Train from Disneyland to Vegas gets Government Funding Could a 300mph train from Disneyland to Las Vegas be on the way? A transportation bill just signed into law chips in $45 million to study the idea, which has a maglev (magnetic levitation) train similar to the Shanghai SMT in the picture above making the 260-mile run from fantasyland to sleazetown in just under two hours. - Source 06/17/08 - In Congress, there's lots of hot air but no gasoline relief Gas may be $4-plus a gallon at the pump, but it's an energy free-for-all on Capitol Hill. With an eye toward soaring fuel costs, Republicans see an opportunity to grab public support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, expanding oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and removing restrictions on harvesting oil shale in the West. Democrats, on the other hand, are marshaling forces to push through conservation and energy efficiency, and to finally dig into windfall profits from what they call oil barons. Truth be told, Congress is in many ways powerless to bring immediate relief to Americans praying that gas prices don't hit $5 this summer. But in the vacuum, Congress does what it does best: blame the other party. "It is difficult to stand by while our soldiers are dying in the Middle East," Hatch said, "and we are sending nearly $700 billion a year to [foreign] government-owned oil companies in that same region, and also to Russia and Venezuela, and not produce our own abundant sources of oil." The "surest way to put Americans to work is domestic energy production," lower taxes, a strong dollar and a balanced budget, Cannon said when asked about legislation extending unemployment benefits. Despite speeches by member after member, neither the House nor Senate passed any legislation this week to address the problem. - Source 06/17/08 - Making Old Muscle Young Researchers boost growth of muscle stem cells to stop age-related muscle deterioration. Manipulating stem cells in old muscle can restore youth to aging tissue, according to research from the University of California, Berkeley. Scientists altered the activity of a molecular pathway to make stem cells in older tissue produce new muscle fibers at levels comparable to young stem cells. They say that their findings may one day lead to novel therapies for age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, as well as possibly to the reversal of the atrophying effect of aging. Older muscles typically grow new cells slower than young ones do, but inhibiting a key pathway in the stem cells of aging mice appears to restore youthful vigor. In previous research, Conboy's team found that old stem cells, placed in culture with young blood and muscle tissue, were able to churn out new cells at a speedier rate. Conversely, young stem cells exposed to old tissue grew prematurely old, significantly scaling back new-cell production. Conboy reasoned that stem cells must receive different chemical cues in youth versus in old age, and identifying and manipulating those cues may successfully restore youth to old muscle. - Source 06/17/08 - E Boo Boos Many items listed for sale on the popular auction site eBay go unnoticed and are sold for a steal because of a simple spelling error. You can pick yourself up a grammatically powered bargain by visiting e Boo Boos. e Boo Boos is a unique search tool used to hunt down misspelled auction items listed on eBay. eBay does not contain a spell checker and many auction items go unnoticed because nobody finds these items when searching using the correctly spelled word. - Source 06/17/08 - Stem-cell treatment helps restore eye-sight Six blind patients have had their eye-sight restored after undergoing pioneering stem cell transplants. Using stem cells from tissue donors, surgeons grew the cells in the laboratory before transplanting them onto the patients' eyes. Dr. Julie Daniels said: "Before the surgery the patients were barely able to recognise when someone was waving a hand in front of their face but we have restored their vision to the point they can read three to four lines down the eye chart." Nineteen patients have now received the treatment, known as limbal stem cell therapy, at Moorfields Eye Hospital. Dr Daniels said: "Their cornea becomes opaque, blood vessels grow across it and their eyes become inflamed and they can't see anymore. It is very painful. "By replacing the limbal stem cells, the cornea begins to clear up as the cells are replaced with the healthy transparent layer again. "We can't restore sight completely yet as the material we are growing the stem cells on is slightly opaque, but patients are certainly reporting an improvement." - Source 06/17/08 - The next performance enhancing drug: Viagra? Roger Clemens, whose claims he never took steroids are under federal investigation, has apparently discovered the benefits of another performance-enhancing drug sweeping the sports world - Viagra. Clemens wasn't alone. The pitcher, who is believed to have scored the drug from a teammate, joined the burgeoning number of athletes who have turned Vitamin V and its over-the-counter substitutes into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms. The drug is so widely used for off-label purposes that it has drawn the attention of anti-doping officials and law-enforcement agencies in the United States and beyond. Among the off-label uses for Viagra, which first went on the market in 1998, it: * Helps build endurance, specially for athletes who compete at high altitudes * Delivers oxygen, nutrients and performance-enhancing drugs to muscles more efficiently * Counteracts the impotence that can be a side-effect of testosterone injections - Source 06/17/08 - Running Heating Oil In Diesel Vehicles Can Backfire Running a diesel vehicle on less-expensive home heating oil just might cross the minds of drivers looking for something cheaper than diesel fuel, now nearly $5 a gallon compared to about $2.80 a gallon a year ago. Home heating oil is closer to $4 a gallon. However, the pennies saved are no bargain, mechanics say. At best, the cruder heating oil is less efficient, meaning poorer engine performance. At worst, home heating oil can ruin high-tech injectors and pumps in new diesel engines, causing $1,000 and more of damage. Plus, it's against tax law to use heating fuel this way. It's a violation because heating oil is not intended for use in a vehicle so it is sold free of road-use taxes. Kelly Manning of the state Department of Motor Vehicles said DMV inspectors who detect heating oil in fuel tanks refer the matters to state and federal tax agents to investigate for excise tax evasion. - Source 06/17/08 - How to Fly (video) - Source 06/17/08 - The Articles Of Impeachment Here they are. The complete set: XXXV Articles of Impeachment. * Article I - Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq. * Article II - Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression. * Article III - Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War. * Article IV - Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States. * Article V - Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression. * Article VI - Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of H. J. Res114. * Article VII - Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War. * Article VIII - Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter. * Article IX - Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor. * Article X - Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes. * Article XI - Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq. * Article XII - Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources. * Article XIIII - Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries. * Article XIV - Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. * Article XV - Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq. * Article XVI - Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors. * Article XVII - Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives. * Article XVIII - Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy. * Article XIX - Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture. * Article XX - Imprisoning Children. * Article XXI - Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government. * Article XXII - Creating Secret Laws. * Article XXIII - Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. * Article XXIV - Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment. * Article XXV - Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens. * Article XXVI - Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements. * Article XXVII - Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply. * Article XXVIII - Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice. * Article XXIX - Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. * Article XXX - Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare. * Article XXXI - Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency. * Article XXXII - Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change. * Article XXXIII - Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911. * Article XXXIV - Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001. * Article XXXV - Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders. / Tip: This also serves as a handy summary of the Bush presidency. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 06/17/08 - Rev. Al Soaks up Boycott Bucks Biz giants pay up or face race rallies. Anheuser-Busch gave him six figures, Colgate-Palmolive shelled out $50,000 and Macy's and Pfizer have contributed thousands to the Rev. Al Sharpton's charity. Almost 50 companies - including PepsiCo, General Motors, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Continental Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and Chase - and some labor unions sponsored Sharpton's National Action Network annual conference in April. Terrified of negative publicity, fearful of a consumer boycott or eager to make nice with the civil-rights activist, CEOs write checks, critics say, to NAN and Sharpton - who brandishes the buying power of African-American consumers. In some cases, they hire him as a consultant. The cash flows even as the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn has been conducting a grand-jury investigation of NAN's finances. "We support those that support us," wrote Sharpton and the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, president of NAN's Michigan chapter, in a letter to American Honda. "We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner." - Source 06/17/08 - Bumper stickers reveal link to road rage Bumper stickers such as “Make Love, Not War” and “More Trees, Less Bush” speak volumes about a vehicle's driver - but maybe not in the way they might hope. People who customize their cars with stickers and other adornments are more prone to road rage than other people, according to researchers in Colorado. People who had a larger number of personalized items on or in their car were 16% more likely to engage in road rage, the researchers report in the journal Applied Social Psychology. - Source 06/17/08 - Custom Receipt Maker This tool lets you make your own custom receipts. Customize your receipt below and press the "Make the receipt!" button. Your custom receipt will be shown (containing the text that you entered) in the space above. The completed receipts are in dollars only but you can enter non-dollar amounts for prices if you like. That way, you can say that something is "free" or "cheap" or whatever you like. What should you put in your custom receipt? It's up to you! The top of he receipt might give a store with a funny name, or perhaps a strange address. Put things you'd like to get, or give products crazy prices. Make a serious receipt, but put a funny slogan at the bottom! Be creative. The only limit is your imagination. - Source 06/17/08 - The $100 Distraction Device Federal subsidies in the United States provide billions of dollars for computer access in schools and libraries, and billions more may soon be spent in the developing world through programs such as One Laptop per Child. But even OLPC's $100 laptop comes loaded with more distractions than my PET ever had. So will kids use these subsidized computing resources to prepare for the demands of the 21st-century job market? Or do computers just serve as a 21st-century substitute for that more venerable time-waster-the television? New research by economists Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches provides an answer: For many kids, computers are indeed more of a distraction than a learning opportunity. The two researchers surveyed households that applied to Euro 200, a voucher distribution program in Romania designed to help poor households defray the cost of buying a computer for their children. It turns out that kids in households lucky enough to get computer vouchers spent a lot less time watching TV-but that's where the good news ends. "Vouchered" kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and reported lower educational aspirations than the "unvouchered" kids. - Source 06/17/08 - Honda begins production of hydrogen car Japanese manufacturer Honda has started the first commercial production of a hydrogen-powered car. The medium-sized four seater is called the FCX Clarity and has a top speed of 160 kilometres per hour. The car runs on an electric motor powered by hydrogen fuel cells and only emits water vapour. Honda will start leasing some of the cars to people living in southern California by the end of August. - Source 06/17/08 - Mystery NZ author's sci-fi tale compared to Austen An obscure book first published in New Zealand in 1881 and republished last month, is being called as significant as Pride and Prejudice. The Great Romance deals with "ground-breaking" themes such as interplanetary colonisation by humankind, sexual relations with aliens and the problems of space flight _ including space shuttles, spacesuits and air locks _ academics and reviewers say. Written by an anonymous author who used the pseudonym "The Inhabitant", the novella was published as two separate volumes. The Los Angeles Times reviewer Ed Park described it as a "slim, oddly proportioned book, a hybrid of utopian and space exploration narratives that reaches out to grasp the reader's hand, unexpectedly and vigorously, from the equally remote milieu of late 19th-century New Zealand". - Source 06/15/08 - Engine Runs With Water w/video It's taken Jonathan Soli two years of work, but it's finally here. His invention could lower your fuel bills by 30%. He built a battery-powered device that can actually turn water into energy and lower the amount of gas you need by about 23%. "It'll lower emissions, clean up the environment, and it will save you money." Soli's invention attaches to your motor and uses both hydrogen and oxygen for energy. So far, he's only tested his invention on lawn mower engines that don't move. He plans to test it on moving engines, and then in cars. He and four friends re-designed the engine and design of a car so it gets 866 miles to the gallon! The car isn't safe for the road, but the combination of that engine, Soli's invention, and a safer frame could revolutionize the way we drive. - Source 06/15/08 - Japanese Company Genepax Water Powered Car w/video Fantastic Lad, among many others, points out another in a long series of claimed "powered by water" cars, this one by a Japanese company called "Genepax," which interestingly enough does not have so much as a Wikipedia entry. What's scary is the uncritical, even serious-sounding, presentation by Reuters of such extraordinary claims quite unbacked by extraordinary evidence. "Almost sounds too good to be true" isn't the half of it; if cars could be made which would run as "long as you have a bottle of water inside" to pour into the fuel tank ("even tea," repeats this report), not only would you know about the car, but you'd notice the long lines of people buying generators, laptops, and power tools that run on the same technology. The snippet Reuters is carrying says "Jun. 13 - Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it." - Source / Genepax shows off water-powered fuel cell vehicle - We've seen plenty of promises about water-powered cars (among other things), but it looks like Japan's Genepax has now made some real progress on that front, with it recently taking the wraps off its Water Energy System fuel cell prototype. The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction. Not surprisingly, the company isn't getting much more specific than that, with it only saying that it's adopted a "well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA." Currently, that system costs on the order of ¥2,000,000 (or about $18,700 -- not including the car), but company says that if it can get it into mass production that could be cut to ¥500,000 or less (or just under $5,000). Head on past the break for a video of car in action courtesy of Reuters. / Their new "Water Energy System (WES)," generates power by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes using a proprietary technology called the Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA). The secret behind MEA is a special material that is capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction. During a recent conference, Genepax unveiled a fuel cell stack with a rated output of 120W and a fuel cell system with a rated output of 300W-and there are plans for a 1kw-class generation system for use in both electric vehicles and houses sometime in the future. At this point, the cost of production on the water-powered vehicle engine itself is around about ¥2,000,000 (US$18,522), but they hope to drop the price to ¥500,000 (US$4600) or less if they succeed in bringing it into mass production. - Source 06/15/08 - Japanese company unveils water-fueled car A Japanese venture company, Genepax, has unveiled a car on that runs on water. All it requires is a litre of water. In fact, any kind of water to be exact, whether its river, rain, sea water, or even Japanese tea. Its an electric powered car that runs solely on hydrogen dioxide. "The main characteristic of this car is that no external input is needed. The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water inside for you to add from time to time," said Kiyoshi Hirasawa, Chief Executive Officer of Genepax, after he proudly announced the company's invention. Once water is poured into the water tank at the back of the car, the newly invented energy generator takes out the hydrogen from the water, releases electrons and finally generates electrical power. "We highly recommend our system since it does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars," said Hirasawa, who is hoping to advertise the car in time for the upcoming G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan. According to the company, 1 liter of water keeps the car running for about an hour with a speed of 80 kilometers or 50 miles an hour. The company has applied for a patent and is hoping to collaborate with Japanese automobile manufacturers to mass manufacture their invention in the very near future. As fuel prices continue rising and people look for greener alternatives, companies globally are trying to come up with alternatives. - Source 06/15/08 - E-bikes can be part of the transportation solution E-bikes fall somewhere between bicycles and motorized scooters. They are propelled by rechargeable batteries. While they are relatively new to Canada, e-bikes make up a significant portion of the transportation mix in Europe, where there are an estimated three million e-bikes on the road, and China, where a reported 80 million e-bikes are in use. E-bikes are part of a group of low-speed alternative-transportation vehicles that include Segways, mopeds and other personal-mobility devices that are emerging in the marketplace faster than governments can regulate them. My e-bike runs on two batteries than take approximately eight hours to recharge. Given that this is done overnight, when electricity demand is the lowest, recharging my e-bike batteries generates little or no greenhouse gas emissions. I initially purchased an e-bike for my daily commute back and forth to work, a round trip of approximately 16 kilometres. In my car, the trip takes approximately 12 minutes each way. My e-bike can do the same distance in less than 20 minutes. Adding approximately 15 minutes to my day seems worth it for an emission-free and fun commute. According to my e-bike's manual, it has a maximum range of 85 kilometres, but given my bike's sluggish performance over the last couple of kilometres, it's my guess that this is based on flat roads and a much lighter passenger. I was in error last week when I stated that e-bikes could travel up to 50 km/hr. They are limited to 32 km/hr. There is a new restricted class for limited-speed motorcycles and mopeds that can go up to 50 km/hr. - Source 06/15/08 - Forced to go green in Gaza Gazan engineers Wasim al-Khozendar and Fayez Annas recently designed a car that runs entirely on electricity as a solution to the fuel scarcity caused by the nearly a year-long Israeli blockade that has included severe cuts in fuel imports. The previously fuel-run, French-designed engine of the car has now been completely replaced with an electric engine that runs only on battery power. Al-Khozendar, who co-designed the engine with his colleague Annan, says that they came up with the idea almost one year ago just prior to the start of the crippling siege on Gaza. "The electric motor of our car is an AC motor, unlike the DC motor, which is costly and unavailable in the local market. When we started running the car in the Gaza streets, we were surprised by the population's reaction," he added. "In the local market we have electric devices to manufacture 20 to 30 cars, and this is definitely not enough for the high demand, which hit more than 1,000, since we began running the car last week." The fully electrical-powered car has become a fixture in front of al-Khozendar Electronics store in Gaza City. "We have replaced all the old parts with electric ones; the new parts are made up of 33 batteries with a capacity of 12 voltages and 17 amps, plus a charger that feeds the motor with a seven-hour long current," Annan explained. "The seven-hour charge allows you to travel for 180 kilometers, and all you need is to recharge the batteries. Inside the car, we have three parameters to measure the voltage consumed, the speed and the battery." However, the engineers say that using an electric-run car in Gaza will be unaffordable for most under the tightening economic conditions. If a car owner wishes to transform his or her engine, it will cost around $2,500 US -- impracticable for most where 75 percent of the population is dependent on food aid. - Source 06/15/08 - Nicotinics - the Ultimate Cure? Don deBethizy, is describing a class of drugs called nicotinics, which he says can restore the memory of Alzheimer’s patients, control pain, and improve attention spans. What’s more, they may boost cognition and memory in healthy people. It seems far out even for the neurotechnology industry, a rapidly growing cluster of companies-small upstarts as well as pharmaceutical giants-that want to alter your gray matter and make billions of dollars in the process. These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing. - Source 06/15/08 - Heart attack admissions fall by up to 40% since smoking ban The number of heart attack patients being admitted to emergency wards has fallen sharply in more than half of England’s hospital trusts since smoking was banned in public places. The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are an early indication of the impact of the smoking ban on heart disease rates in England. Some hospitals have seen the number of cases fall by 41 per cent since last July. The British Heart Foundation said that it showed the ban was the “most significant public health initiative this century”. Studies in Scotland and Ireland, which introduced a public-smoking ban in 2006, showed hospital admissions for heart attacks falling by 17 and 14 per cent respectively. Comparable evidence has come from France and Italy. These drops in the rate of heart attacks have been attributed to a large number of people stopping smoking, and far fewer people being exposed to airborne toxins through passive smoking. - Source 06/15/08 - Solar Technology Used to Roast Chickens Using specially design mirrors, the solar grill absorbs sunlight as energy and uses no additional fuels or energy source. It can cook a pre-marinated 3.5 pound chicken in about 10 minutes. Inspired by childhood experimentation with a magnifying glass, Sila cooks up to 50 chickens a day and sells them for around $5 each. The solar man’s grill is located 55 miles outside of Bangkok and is only open from 7am to 11am each day when the sun’s rays are at their strongest. Of course the stand is closed whenever the sky is overcast or raining. The solar grill invention has attracted so much attention that discussions are underway to export the technique to other Asian countries like Japan. - Source 06/15/08 - US retail sales surge as Americans spend more on gasoline, goods US retail sales surged a stronger-than-expected 1.0 percent in May as Americans splurged out on gasoline, consumer goods and restaurant meals, government data showed Thursday. Spending on gasoline has been stoked by a sharp spike in fuel costs, but the sales gains were spread across a variety of products and sectors, raising expectations that US economic growth is firing up. - Source 06/15/08 - Solar Cooking Archive for Free Plans Solar Cookers International sponsors the Solar Cooking Archive on the World Wide Web at http://solarcooking.org where you will find illustrated construction plans, photographs, documents, and an international directory of solar cooking promoters. Their thrice-yearly newsletter, the Solar Cooker Review, is also available there. An excellent document for further reading is The Expanding World of Solar Box Cooking, by Barbara Kerr. You'll find a number of audio programs that you can listen to online here. Don't forget to read about eye safety here. Also Topics needing research contains answers to other questions. You can also participate in our online forums here. - Source 06/15/08 - RUBotted Checks Your Computer for Zombie Bots Windows only: Freeware application RUBotted monitors your computer for the presence of malware zombie bots and alerts you of any suspicious activity. A common and popular form of malware, bots turn an infected computer into a zombie of sorts that will perform tasks in the background when directed by the maker of the virus. Often a network of bots will be used to send spam or participate in denial-of-service attacks. RUBotted monitors your computer for suspicious, bot-like activity and alerts you if it thinks you may be infected. (via lifehacker.com) - Source 06/15/08 - eSolar Receives Funding for 33MW Modular Solar Power Plants "The eSolar™ power plant is based on mass manufactured components, and designed for rapid construction, uniform modularity, and unlimited scalability. Rather than over-engineering the solution, eSolar’s smart scalable solar architecture targets what we see as the four key business obstacles facing the sector: price, scalability, rapid deployment, and grid impact." Centering on eSolar’s 33 MW pre-fab form-factor, the company’s modular design translates to minimal land requirements. The company’s solar power plant solutions are tailored to fit local resources and produce a low environmental footprint, favoring a straightforward siting and permitting process. eSolar has secured land rights in the southwest United States to support the production and transmission of over 1 GW of power. eSolar will have a fully operational power plant later this year in southern California. - Source 06/15/08 - Ice Ages Linked to Periods of Solar Inactivity It wasn't long ago that astronomers identified a new sunspot indicating the beginning of a new solar cycle. However, the solar activity was short lived and the sun's surface returned to dormancy. Some astronomers have begun hypothesizing that a sustained lack of activity could actually trigger a mini ice age similar to a period of cold that hit only a few centuries past. Although it is still far too early for any accurate assessments of future inactivity, many astronomers are already perplexed by this cycle's particular lack of sunspots. If the ice age theory held water, would it not be a bittersweet irony for environmentalists to begin crying about "Global Cooling?" - Source 06/15/08 - '100 years to recover from Bush' It will take the United States a century to recover from the damage wreaked by President George. W Bush, US writer Gore Vidal said in an interview published on Saturday. "The president behaved like a virtual criminal but we didn't have the courage to sack him for fear of violating the American constitution," Vidal told the El Mundo newspaper. The author, a trenchant critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, said it would take the United States "100 years to repair the damage" caused by Bush. "We live in a dictatorship. We have a fascist government ...which controls the media," he said. Vidal also said presidential aspirant Barack Obama was "intelligent" adding that it would be a "novelty" to have an "intelligent" person in the White House. - Source 06/15/08 - Floods send corn, ethanol soaring Corn futures rose to another record high and ethanol prices surged to a two-year high on Friday as storms lashing the US Midwest raised the specter of a crop that will be too small to satisfy demand for food, feed and biofuel. The seventh straight surge in corn prices further squeezed margins for US ethanol producers, who are scaling back unprofitable operations and also face flooding at distilleries that turn corn from nearby farms into the biofuel. Flood waters have inundated fields throughout the corn belt. Especially worrisome for the crop, were cresting rivers in Iowa and Illinois, the top two growing states. At the Chicago Board of Trade, July corn closed up 22-3/4 cents, or 3%, at $US7.31-3/4 a bushel, after peaking at $US7.37. The contract for July 2009 hit $US7.81-1/2, the highest price for any corn contract. - Source 06/15/08 - President Obama St. Peter is at the Pearly Gates checking up on the people waiting to enter Heaven. He asks the next one in line, 'So, who are you, and what did you do on Earth?' The fellow says, 'I'm Barack Obama, and I was the first black to be elected President of the United States.' St. Peter says, 'The U.S.? A black President? You gotta be kidding me! When did this happen?' And Obama says, 'About twenty minutes ago.' It reminded me of comedian Dave Chappelle’s skit about the first black president and his Mexican vice president saying the black President should choose a Mexican Vice President in case he gets shot, that way both he AND the borders would stay safe. - email and link 06/15/08 - Fleshy Dino Tissue might lead to real Jurassic Park Deep inside the dusty university store room, three scientists struggle to lift a huge fossilised bone. It is from the leg of a dinosaur. For many years, this chunky specimen has languished cryptically on a shelf. Jack Horner gave a piece of the bone to one of his students, palaeontologist Mary Schweitzer. Examining it, she noticed a strange structure inside the hard outer case. It resembled a pattern found only in the bones of pregnant birds. The magnitude of the discovery was immediately apparent to the Montana University team - the material appeared to be well preserved flesh from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Horner says: ‘It’s unimaginable to find soft tissue. It was just assumed that everything had been fossilised.’ More extraordinary yet, was the next find in neighbouring parts of the dinosaur bone. ‘Out popped the blood vessels,’ says Schweitzer. Many scientists believed organic matter from a living thing could not survive more than 100,000 years - let alone 68 million years. Next came the team’s attempt to salvage DNA from other bones kept in the university storerooms. They put the samples they collected under a powerful microscope. Magnified 4,000 times, tiny structures unlikely to be mineralised fossil material were apparent. The technology is advancing so fast, in sequencing genes and in putting genes back together, and in manufacturing long stretches of DNA.’ Larsson now believes that in a hundred years or so, geneticists could retro-engineer animals that appear identical to Mesozoic dinosaurs. ‘Why can’t we take all the genetics, just change it around a little bit, and produce a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or something that looks like one?’ he asks. - Source 06/13/08 - Human Trials a Priority for Kanzius Radio Frequency Cancer cure Cancer researchers, notoriously cautious medical professionals, remain remarkably optimistic about the possibilities of getting human research trials started on John Kanzius' radio-frequency generator. This is the crucial step to see if the radio waves from Kanzius' invention can kill cancer cells in humans. It's significant that Kanzius and the cancer research teams testing his cancer-fighting invention are actually talking about the possibilities of human trials in just two years. This sort of faith from cancer researchers so early in the process is extraordinary. Kanzius reported that two important medical manuscripts are scheduled to be published in July detailing how far the radio wave invention has come as a potential cancer cure. Kanzius, who has a rare form of leukemia, didn't hesitate to place all his project's hopes on potential human cancer trials to determine if the radio-frequency generator can become a legitimate and successful cancer-treatment weapon. Every important factor so far indicates the radio-frequency generator is a smashing success when used in animal testing. Researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have proven that Kanzius' device kills cancerous tumors in living animals with no noticeable side effects. They also have targeted four types of cancer cells with nanoparticles. These are tiny pieces of metal that heat up and destroy the cells when bombarded with radio waves. - Source 06/13/08 - Gasless Vacuum Dirigible for Safe Air Travel (Apr, 1932) Let us assume that we have a metal ball, say one foot in diameter. The ball is of tin and we connect it to a vacuum pump which sucks all of the air out of it. However, long before we can do this, something very terrible happens to the tin ball. When a certain and critical point is reached in the evacuation, an apparently invisible force crushes our tin can and it takes on an appearance very similar to a derby hat that has been sat upon by the heavy man from the circus. The atmospheric pressure on the outside of the can does this; a pressure that, in the case of a very high vacuum, reaches 14.7 pounds per square inch. So far, we do not have a very cheerful prospect Action of a Hollow Ball But what would happen if we had a metal ball that would be able to withstand this pressure? The metal ball would float; it would have a great buoyancy, greater by far than it would have if it were filled with helium or hydrogen. Of course, in assuming this, we must keep in mind the fact the metal ball would have to be very light and very strong. If we had a metal that would meet these specifications, we could have an all-metal, gasless air machine. We cannot turn to aluminum or any of its alloys because they are too heavy. The thinnest and best steels are also ruled out but our search would eventually lead us to a comparatively unknown member of the metal family. It is called beryllium and we may expect many wonderful things of it. Today beryllium is in the same commercial position that aluminum was in before the masterful researches of Charles Hall. But beryllium is a far more wonderful metal than aluminum; it has one-third the weight of aluminum and many times its tensil strength. It is hard, non-corrosive and one of the best behaved members of the whole metal family. Although it is not as plentiful in the earth’s crust there are sufficient amounts of it to make its commercial use very alluring. The beryllium air-machine may well be a combination vacuum and plane ship with the cubic capacity of the wings large enough to be a great factor in keeping the ship in the air. - Source 06/13/08 - Seizures caused by music For several years, Stacey Gayle had seizures whenever she heard certain songs. Sean Paul's "Temperature" was a sure bet to send her into convulsions. Gayle suffered from musicogenic epilepsy, seizures caused by music. According to Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, the condition was first described in 1937. A total of just 150 cases of musicogenic epilepsy have ever been reported. Once Gayle was properly diagnosed, she had a small portion of her brain removed to stop the song-induced fits. It worked. Scientific American has her story. From the article: At first, the seizures seemed to occur randomly. In the spring of 2006, however, she noticed a pattern. At the time, Sean Paul's "Temperature" was sitting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, continually being played on urban radio stations. It was playing at nearly every barbecue and party she went to. That was a problem: "Every time it would go on, I would pass out and go into a seizure," she recalls. All it seemed to take was a few seconds of the song to send Gayle to the floor. "That's the last thing you would think," she explains, "but I did it at home one time and it happened again." (via boingboing.net) - Source 06/13/08 - Cigarette Injection Destroys Nicotine (Jan, 1931) THE pernicious cigarette can no longer be accused of coating the lungs with nicotine, for a German chemist has discovered a chemical which, when injected in the cigarette with the syringe shown, rids the fag of this harmful drug, and thus renders it harmless. - Source 06/13/08 - Algae Bio-Fuels Successfully Tested in Clean, Green Cyclone Engine Cyclone Power Technologies announced that it has successfully run its revolutionary external combustion Cyclone Engine on fuels derived from pure algae. The company reported that algae fuel burned cleanly and with greater thermal efficiency than previous tests on Ethanol and other alcohol-based fuels. Additionally, the bio-fuels tested were 100% pure algae with no diesel additives, which means that the refining process required for use in the Cyclone Engine would be less expensive and less time intensive than the process required for use in today's diesel engines. he Cyclone is an eco-friendly engine capable of running on virtually any fuel or fuel combination without modification of its combustion chamber or fuel injector, and is scalable to practically any size or power output from small garden equipment to automobiles, boats and large industrial generators. "We were very pleased with the performance of the algae fuels," stated Cyclone's CEO, Harry Schoell. "Algae has outstanding potential as a legitimate bio-fuel of the future, especially in conjunction with the Cyclone Engine. It generates substantial BTUs and can be grown almost anywhere. Just as important, algae fuel is not competitive with food supplies." - Source 06/13/08 - Rattlesnake Bites Getting Worse Doctors in southern California say they have noticed an increase in the frequency and potency of rattlesnake bites. According to doctors at UCSD Medical Center, rattlesnake venom in southern California appears to have gotten much more potent over the past two years, especially this year. Dr. Richard Clark of UCSD Medical Center says "we know we've seen a couple of people stop breathing and have to be put on ventilators and that's very rare in California and they didn't seem to be direct bites into blood vessels or allergic reactions." And Dr. Clark says some of those patients have also experienced severe weakness and low blood pressure. So why is the venom getting stronger? Dr. Clark isn't sure but he believes it could be an example of natural selection. Dr. Clark says "we've also had reports that the antivenin hasn't worked as well in past years, and we don't know the answer to that either." - Source 06/13/08 - From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age Security and stability in the 21st century have little to do with traditional power politics, military conflict between states, and issues of grand strategy. Instead they revolve around the disruptive consequences of globalization, declining governance, inequality, urbanization, and nonstate violent actors. The author explores the implications of these issues for the United States. He proposes a rejection of “stateocentric” assumptions and an embrace of the notion of the New Middle Ages characterized, among other things, by competing structures, fragmented authority, and the rise of “no-go” zones. He also suggests that the world could tip into a New Dark Age. He identifies three major options for the United States in responding to such a development. The author argues that for interventions to have any chance of success the United States will have to move to a trans-agency approach. But even this might not be sufficient to stanch the chaos and prevent the continuing decline of the Westphalian state. - Source 06/13/08 - World’s Largest Solar Farm Operational Later This Year High on the Alantejo Plain, near the small town of Mouro in Eastern Portugal, the world’s biggest solar photovoltaic farm is nearing completion. When the £250 million ($500 million) farm is fully operational later this year, it will be twice as large as any project of its kind in the world. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity every year, enough to power 30,000 homes. The farm, located in an area with the highest annual sunshine per square meter in Europe, is made up of 2520 giant solar panels, positioned at a 45 degrees angle, to track the sun through 240 degrees every day.Portugal, with no oil, coal or gas reserves and no expertise in nuclear power, has some of the most ambitious targets for renewables in Europe, and aims to become a leader in the European clean-tech revolution. - Source 06/13/08 - DOE awards $30M for plug-in hybrid electric car research One has to wonder if this news is too little too late already but, Ford, General Motors and General Electric will split $30 million to develop and demonstrate Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles research projects over the next three years. The Department of Energy said today the projects will hasten the development of vehicles capable of traveling up to 40 miles without recharging, which includes most daily roundtrip commutes and satisfies 70% of the average daily travel in the US. The DOE says PHEVs are hybrid vehicles that can be driven in electric-only or hybrid modes and recharged from a standard electric outlet. They offer increased energy efficiency and decreased petroleum consumption by using electricity as the primary fuel for urban driving. The Government Accountability Office recently took issue with many of the DOE’s advanced energy plans. It noted that a key factor to any sustainable deployment of advanced energy technologies will be to make them cost competitive, while addressing technical and environmental challenges, so that the market can support a more diversified portfolio. - Source 06/13/08 - Thrills With New Type Balloon (Apr, 1932) BALLOON jumping, that spectacular and thrilling but highly dangerous sport, may receive new impetus from the successful demonstration of a new type of equipment invented by Jean Cambissa of Korfu, Greece. The balloon, of 100 cubic meters capacity, lifts a light metal frame upon which the pilot sits while he flaps a pair of wings with his arms. These wings, together with a rudder operated by the feet, give the pilot a certain amount of control-something which was entirely lacking with the old balloon jumpers. - Source 06/13/08 - BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq. For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies. While Presdient George W Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted. To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House committee on oversight and government reform, said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, it's egregious. "It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history." In the run-up to the invasion, one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth $7bn that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president. Unusually only Halliburton got to bid - and won. - Source 06/13/08 - Killer Tools to Get The Most Out of Your USB Thumb Drive If you’re a freelancer, I’m pretty sure you know the importance of a USB thumb drive. At a basic level, it helps you store important data and transfer files related to your projects from one computer to another. If you’ve only ever used your thumb drive for the entry-level tasks of storing and transferring data, it’s time to unleash the hidden potential of this tiny device. Whether you’re a freelance writer, web developer or a freelancer on the move, you should take a look at the following tools, all of which take this device to the next level and convert it to a power drive. 1. Portable apps 2. MojoPac 3. Email Client 4. Sync Files 5. Organizers 6. Invoicing And Payment 7. Tiny USB Office 8. Encryption And Passwords. - Source 06/13/08 - PIMCO's Bill Gross with Scathing Review of America ou can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. - Abraham Lincoln / What this country needs is either a good 5¢ cigar or the reincarnation of an Illinois “rail-splitter” willing to tell the American people “what up” - “what really up.” We have for so long now been willing to be entertained rather than informed, that we more or less accept majority opinion, perpetually shaped by ratings obsessed media, at face value. After 12 months of an endless primary campaign barrage, for instance, most of us believe that a candidate’s preacher - Democrat or Republican - should be a significant factor in how we vote. We care more about who’s going to be eliminated from this week’s American Idol than the deteriorating quality of our healthcare system. Alternative energy discussion takes a bleacher’s seat to the latest foibles of Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears and then we wonder why gas is four bucks a gallon. We care as much as we always have - we just care about the wrong things: entertainment, as opposed to informed choices; trivia vs. hardcore ideological debate. It’s Sunday afternoon at the Coliseum folks, and all good fun, but the hordes are crossing the Alps and headed for modern day Rome - better educated, harder working, and willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Can it be any wonder that an estimated 1% of America’s wealth migrates into foreign hands every year? We, as a people, are overweight, poorly educated, overindulged, and imbued with such a sense of self importance on a geopolitical scale, that our allies are dropping like flies. “Yes we can?” Well, if so, then the “we” is the critical element, not the leader that will be chosen in November. Let’s get off the couch and shape up - physically, intellectually, and institutionally - and begin to make some informed choices about our future. Lincoln didn’t say it, but might have agreed, that the worst part about being fooled is fooling yourself, and as a nation, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of that for a long time now. - Source 06/13/08 - micromagic - Animatronic and Robotics supplier micromagic systems was founded in 1999 to supply animatronic, robotic and puppet control systems and services to the film and television industry. It has developed a variety of products from servo reversers through to complete performance systems which have played pivotal roles in award-winning productions ranging from feature films (the Harry Potter series) to music videos (Massive Attack) to commercials (Lloyds TSB). - Source 06/13/08 - Millimeter Wave A new security technique coming to DFW airport this week sparks a debate over security versus the right to privacy. The Transportation Security Administration body scanning technology will be used randomly on people. The body scanning basically allows security personnel to see what you've got under your clothing. It's also being added at some other airports around the nation. - Source 06/13/08 - Aer Flingus for Trebuchet Commuting! With no end in sight to the rise in fuel prices, commuters in Albany are using a network of trebuchets to save on gas and the airlines are taking notice. “We have a high-density of renaissance festival attendees, so it’s only natural that the trend started here,” said Clinton Decola who heads the Trebuchet Transport Cooperative of Albany (TTCA). “In medieval times the trebuchet was accurate, but with today’s technology we can make it even more accurate. People can launch themselves from house to house until they’re near enough their work to walk.” The members of the TTCA operate over one hundred trebuchets and catapults around the Albany area. Members pay a small fee to maintain the trebuchets, then they can use the network to travel anywhere the trebuchets launch to. Christian Rega uses the network to fling himself to work and back saving over $100 a week on gas. “I save money; I’m helping break America’s addiction to oil and defying death every day. It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Rega. Decola said that the group’s computer trajectory analyzers and advanced wind speed monitoring system result in most passengers landing within five feet of their designated safe landing area. Decola said that even some airlines have contacted him about long range trebuchets to replace fuel guzzling 747s. The Irish airline Aer Lingus has set up a pilot program dubbed “Aer Flingus” for sending passengers from Dublin to London. (Too funny not to post. - JWD) - Source 06/13/08 - The Bikini Effect Makes Men Impulsive Bikinis and other sexy stimuli can make men more prone to seek immediate gratification - leading to blown diets, budgets and bank accounts, new research suggests. In the study, detailed in the Journal of Consumer Research, men alternately fondled t-shirts and bras (which were not being worn during the test). After touching the bras, men valued the future less and the present more, said lead researcher Bram Van Den Bergh of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Viewing ads with women in bikinis had the same effect. It wasn't that the men were simply distracted by their sexual arousal, which caused them to choose more impulsively. On the contrary, they exhibited improved cognition and creativity after exposure to sexy stimuli. Evolutionarily speaking, Briers hypothesized, unfulfilled sexual arousal could trigger a subconscious belief that one's reproductive status is at stake. Rendered fearful, men reach out for other "resources" - a quick payoff, fast food - to better their chances for survival. In modern, more splurge-friendly times, this may be a maladaptive tendency. The bikini effect does vary in strength from person to person, Van Den Bergh said. While most men are vulnerable to subtle types of stimuli - like sexy ads and touching lingerie - others may need to see a woman nude before feeling impulsive. No matter, Van Den Bergh warned, "being exposed to a sexy girl may influence what stock you invest in or what candy bar you buy." - Source 06/13/08 - GOP Blocks windfall tax on Big Oil Saved by Senate Republicans, big oil companies dodged an attempt Tuesday to slap them with a windfall profits tax and take away billions of dollars in tax breaks in response to the record gasoline prices that have the nation fuming. GOP senators shoved aside the Democratic proposal, arguing that punishing Big Oil won't do a thing to lower the $4-a-gallon-price of gasoline that is sending economic waves across the country. High prices at the pump are threatening everything from summer vacations to Meals on Wheels deliveries to the elderly. - Source 06/11/08 - Killing Cancer Cells Using Electrical Field A group of scientists headed by Yoram Palti from the Technion Institute in Israel, succeeded in killing dividing cells without harming non-dividing ones using electrical charges. It turns out that an electrical field in a small enough voltage doesn't damage living cells. The scientists used this fact to treat a cancerous organ with an altering current (AC) electrical field. Using the AC electrical field, normal cells remain unharmed while the dividing cancerous cells are destroyed. The treatment is supposed to have very few side-effects and since it is done using external electrodes it is non invasive. The risks include seizures or cardiac arrhythmias, but since the frequency used is larger than 10kHz no such side-effects are expected to happen. Current cancer treatments that target dividing cells, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy have the problem of killing frequently dividing normal cells like bone marrow cells. Because the bone protects the bone marrow from electrical charges, the AC electric charge will have a significantly lower affect (100 fold less!) on the bone marrow than in other treatments where the cells are not protected by the bone. Using electrical fields seems to be a promising way to cure cancer, being both effective and free of side-effects. (Thanks to Al Tejada for the headsup. - JWD) - Source 06/11/08 - A Hybrid with no Transmission…..and it gets 160 MPG too!!! Generally; 10-20% of a car’s power is lost through the transmission. This includes all automobiles: cars, trucks, and even hybrids. Real world numbers are gathered from the wheels (wheel horse power). So if you buy a new Nissan 350z rated from the factory at 280 horsepower…..it really is only putting down around 239 hp to the wheels…..Darn transmission! The Volvo ReCharge “packs a small electric motor in each wheel, so that no power is lost in the drivetrain.” The electric wheel motors will be powered by electro magnets and computers. The car will run on battery power for a certain number of miles before the diesel engine kicks on. And since the engine will not be connected to a transmission; the power made will be transferred more efficiently to the batteries or a fuel cell. All of this adds up to a 160 MPG car…..Hopefully this technology will reach us before our economy collapses due to skyrocketing gas prices! - Source 06/11/08 - American Strikes Oil -- from a Plastic Soda Bottle? Frank Pringle, 64, is the CEO of Global Resource Corp. (GRBC), in West Berlin, New Jersey, and he has developed a patent-pending emissions-free environmentally-friendly technology that uses microwaves to pull out fuel from shale rock, tires, plastic bottles, toxic sludge from river bottoms and other pieces of junk. Actually, I'm not sure if he can get oil from a Pringles can, but he has microwaved lawn cuttings into a substance that could be refined into alcohol fuel. It sounds like he can make oil out of about anything. "The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects -- or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what's around you." Pringle's machine can turn 10 tons of auto waste--tires, plastic, vinyl--into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy. BTUs are British Thermal Units. Beyond that, I know next to nothing about BTUs, but 17 million sounds like a lot of them. - Source 06/11/08 - Lab drives car to 100 mpg Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden are testing a spruced-up Toyota Prius, a plug-in hybrid sedan complete with a solar panel attached to its oval roof and a bigger battery in the trunk to supply power in lieu of the gasoline-fueled engine. The result: A spunky Prius that runs the initial 60 miles mostly on battery, adding up to a fuel mileage of 100 miles per gallon. "The stored power in the battery does a great job of displacing petroleum," said Tony Markel, a senior engineer at NREL who has been working on the 2006 model Prius for the past two years. "For most people, their daily commute is about 30 miles, so this car would run virtually on battery and only need to be recharged at night." - Source 06/11/08 - Of Late, Fewer Sunspots Than Usual - link with 2012 End of the World? "The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. The sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, with the next cycle just beginning and expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why. In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700." - Source 06/11/08 - Root Cause of Epilepsy Found Experiments in the last century found that by breathing carbon dioxide (CO²), an epileptic patient boosted acid levels in the brain and could terminate a fit, although the molecular switch for achieving this was veiled in mystery. In experiments on mice, scientists from the University of Iowa and the Veterans Affairs Iowa City Health Care System, reporting in a specialist journal, believe they have found the switch. A channel known as ASIC1a, located on the surface of brain cells, opens up in response to higher acid levels and admits charged atoms known as ions. This in turn activates other brain cells that block the seizures, the investigators believe. “We found that ASIC1a does not seem to play a role in how a seizure starts, but as the seizure continues and the pH is reduced, ASIC1a plays a role in stopping additional seizure activity,” said investigator Adam Ziemann. PH is a measure of acidity. The lower the pH index, the higher the acidity level. Among mice with ASIc1a, breathing CO² caused brain pH to drop rapidly and protect mice from lethal fits. - Source 06/11/08 - Microwaved Water - See What It Does To Plants This is a sience fair project that my granddaughter did for 2006. In it she took filered water and divided it into two parts. The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the second part she heated to boiling in a microwave. Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave. She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave. As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference. - Source 06/11/08 - Paper Stronger Than Cast Iron "All paper is made of cellulose, which at the nanoscale level is quite strong, but paper processing makes large, fragile fibers that break easily. Researchers in Sweden have have come up with a manufacturing process that keeps the fibers small, resulting in 'nanopaper' with over 1.6 times the tensile strength of cast iron (214 megapascals vs. 130 mPa). And since cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, it's cheap to use compared to other exotic, expensive-to-produce options - such as carbon nanotubes." - Source 06/11/08 - Bad Neighborhoods, Dangerous Domains A new report gathers information found by a Web crawling analysis feature in McAfee's SiteAdvisor with the purpose of comparing addresses ending in 265 different country domain codes (e.g., .ru for Russia, .cn for China, etc.). Security analyst Shane Keats explains, "We looked at the major categories, including exploits by drive-by downloads, spam, and downloads that come with malware such as viruses." Hong Kong come in at number one with 19% of sites ending in .hk visited having some form of virus, malware or over the top pop-up ads. The following round out the top five most dangerous: Most Dangerous Domains; Hong Kong (.hk), PR of China (.cn), Philippines (.ph), Romania (.ro), Russia (.ru). - Safest Domains; Finland (.fi), Japan (.jp), Norway (.no), Slovenia (.si), Colombia (.co). - Source 06/11/08 - How to Recover Deleted Files with Free Software We've all been there at some point. You delete an important file, somehow it skips your Recycle Bin altogether, and for all practical purposes, it's disappeared into the ether. But before you hit the big red panic button, there's a very good chance that your file is still alive and kicking somewhere on your hard drive-you just need to know how to find it. With the right tools, finding and recovering that deleted file can be as simple as a few clicks of your mouse. Part I: The Overview - Ok, so you've lost an important file. Don't panic. Take a breath, and let's see if we can find it. Before you go into full-on file recovery mode, make sure you double-check the folder you had saved it in and the Recycle Bin or Trash. Still nothing? - 1. Stop What You're Doing 2. Find the Right File Recovery Program...details at the link. - Source 06/11/08 - How Long Do We Have? About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier: 'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.' 'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.' From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.' 'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.' 'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence: 1. from bondage to spiritual faith; 2. from spiritual faith to great courage; 3. from courage to liberty; 4. from liberty to abundance; 5. from abundance to complacency; 6. from complacency to apathy; 7. from apathy to dependence; 8. from dependence back into bondage.' 1776 - 1976 - Courtesy Ed Heft 06/11/08 - Ex-Energy Executive: Phase Out Coal, Oil A former utility executive and energy adviser says America can and should phase out coal-generated power and move entirely to renewable electricity within 30 years. S. David Freeman, who advised President Carter on energy in the 1970s and ran Los Angeles Water and Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority, says the conversion is not without its costs. Freeman says the country should ban new coal-fired power plants, phase out existing ones and invest in technologies and infrastructure that can deliver reliable solar, geothermal and wind power. Natural gas, the cleanest of fossil fuels, can be used to generate needed electricity as the conversion to renewables unfolds, he says. He agreed that regulators should promote renewable energy when they can. He noted that the PSC is seeking a grant to study storage of compressed air that could he used to generate wind power when the wind doesn't blow. "Whether it's gas-fired or clean coal, you're going to need a resource that's going to provide stability," Corcoran said. "The question at the end of the day, as a utility and a country, is that we need to find a balanced portfolio of resources." Freeman said there's no such thing as "clean coal," which he called a marketing gimmick from the coal and energy companies. Oil and coal companies give lip service to renewable energy development, but they're not putting any serious money into it, he added. Freeman acknowledges that the country will need to build new infrastructure, such as transmission lines, to move energy from new plants in new locations, and that it will he more costly initially. "Over time, the cost of these fossil fuels is going to keep going up," Freeman says. "The beauty of a renewable resource like wind and sun is, once you bought it, once you build it, the sun rises every day and the wind blows every day, and it ain't going up in price." - Source 06/11/08 - Static Cling wall climbing Robot w/video A new robot that uses electric charges to climb walls was unveiled at a conference in Pasadena, Calif., last month. The project, led by a former Cape Codder, is changing the way scientists think about climbing technology. Electroadhesion - the process Ron Pelrine's robot uses - uses an on-board battery to induce an electric charge that makes the robot "stick" to a surface and move up and down. It is static electricity, the same principle that makes a balloon stick to your clothes when you rub it against your hair, SRI researcher Harsha Prahlad said. To move along the wall, the robot uses tank treads driven by a conventional motor. SRI's Web site says the new technology lets its robots climb everything from brick to glass. Earlier climbing robots have used adhesives and suction cups to scale walls. But those devices are not effective on all surfaces. Ron Pelrine said his new invention will help build robots to inspect buildings, paint walls and clean windows. As wireless controls improve, he said electroadhesion might appear in military surveillance devices - and in some really zany toys. - Source 06/11/08 - Where to find TV shows on the internet In the internet age, no TV show is ever gone, just a little harder to find. If you're looking for that classic episode of My Mother the Car or Tila Tiquila's latest mush, you'll probably find it among this, our list of places to watch TV shows on the internet. Joost Jericho, Star Trek, Babylon 5 - Hulu (NBC and Newscorp) House, Family Guy, The Simpsons - ABC Family 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, Smallville - ABC Lost (all seasons), Dancing with the Stars, Ugly Betty - AOL and AOL in2TV Full episodes of hundreds of shows, including many long-gone - Disney Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place - Fancast Episodes from 'classic' television; MacGuyver, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Dragnet - Liketelevision Golden oldies: Ozzie and Harriet, The Andy Griffith Show, Beverly Hillbillies - Fox Full episodes of many Fox staples: Prison Break, American Dad, Cops - Turbonick: Nickeloden's channel, with episodes of SpongeBob and other children's favs - TBS A light offering of shows including Seinfeld, House of Payne, and The Bill Engvall Show - USA Full episodes of USA originals such as Monk and Psych - Cartoon Network The cable network's cartoon lineup minus Adult Swim: where is my Robot Chicken? (at Adult Swim; thanks, William D.) - The CW Video Aliens in America, Wet 'n Wild, and other quality fare - Looney Tunes For lovers of classic animation. - Source 06/11/08 - Peking duck is 'better for your heart than statins' The ingredient used to colour Peking duck can cut the risk of dying from heart disease by a third and cancer by two-thirds, scientists say. Researchers looking at red yeast rice said the benefits of the Chinese food colouring even seemed to outstrip those of statins - the much vaunted cholesterol-lowering drugs. Describing the effects as ' profound', they said extract of the fermented rice could play an important part in improving heart health. Taking the supplements also nearly halves the risk of a second heart attack and reduces the odds of cardiac surgery, they found. The rice is fermented with the red yeast Monascus purpureus. It has been used in China for thousands of years as a food preservative, colourant and seasoning, and herbal medicine. For the study, scientists tracked heart attack survivors at more than 60 hospitals in China. They focused mainly on heart disease, but cancer deaths were also recorded. Each day, patients took capsules of a partially purified extract of the red yeast rice preparation Xuezhikang - XZK - or an inactive dummy supplement. Researchers compared the progress of the groups over five years. To their surprise, they found taking the supplements cut the odds of death from heart problems and cancer. - Source 06/11/08 - Fan of American chestnut tree says it can feed the world Philip Rutter says the trees he's growing and testing on his farm in Canton, Minn., could be a source of food, fuel and building material. Rutter has developed a hybrid chestnut that is resistant to the disease and will even grow in places like Minnesota, which is not part of the chestnut tree's native habitat. Chestnut flour predates wheat flour by about 1,000 years and can be a major source of calories. The flour can be made into bread or pasta, and the nuts can be fed to farm animals. In fact, Food Network star Chef Mario Batali works with a supplier to get chestnut-fed pigs for his New York restaurants. Batali said the chestnut diet gives the pork an intense, woodsy flavor. The nuts themselves can be used as a fuel source. Rutter said it's similar to the way corn is processed for ethanol. The fast-growing trees can be trimmed and the wood can be burned for heat. The rot-resistant lumber can be used for building material. Rutter wants to get the United Nations interested in planting chestnut trees in Africa. He said the crop could help fight starvation in some regions. Rutter wants to change the world one nut at a time. - Source 06/11/08 - UK to give waterless washing machine a spin A washing machine using as little as a cup of water for each washing cycle could go on sale to environmentally conscious Britons next year. Plastic chips are used to remove dirt and stains from clothes, leaving them dry and reducing energy consumption as there is no need to use a dryer after the washing cycle, Xeros said in a statement. Washing machine usage has risen by 23 percent in the past 15 years. The average household uses almost 21 litres of water daily on clothes washing, 13 percent of daily household water consumption, according to Waterwise, a non-government organisation focused on decreasing water wastage. A typical washing machine uses about 35 kilograms of water for every kilogram of clothes, in addition to the power needed to heat the water and dry the clothes. - Source 06/11/08 - Mud volcano pinned on miner INDONESIA'S devastating mud volcano is a man-made disaster caused by exploratory drilling for gas, a report has found. Researchers say the finding disproves the theory, long-argued by the exploration well's operator, that an earthquake 250km away was to blame. The mud volcano burst through the earth two years ago during deep drilling at the exploratory gas well, linked to Indonesia's richest man and also part-owned by Australian company Santos. It has spewed millions of cubic metres of hot, stinking sludge in heavily populated East Java over the past two years. "We have known for hundreds of years that earthquakes can trigger eruptions - in this case, the earthquake was simply too small and too far away," said the university's Professor Michael Manga. The report found the effect of the earthquake was minimal, with only a "tiny" resulting change to underground pressure. It said scientists were 99 per cent certain drilling operations were to blame. - Source 06/11/08 - I jet around: Motor is a cut down F-15 Tomcat fighter plane When it comes to flying down the motorway, this little car has its rivals licked - because its inventor has based it on the legendary US F-15 Tomcat fighter jet. Built by school mechanic Rich Hammer, 52, with a little help from his brother Steve, the three-wheeler is part-car, part-motorcycle and part plane. It cost £5,000 and took 18 months to build - not bad considering its wingspan is adjustable to 15 feet. The jet trike doesn't fly and doesn't use jet fuel, just unleaded- and does about 30 miles to the gallon. - Source 06/11/08 - One-Fourth Of NYC Residents Have Herpes Rates Of Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, And Infectious Syphilis Are Also Higher Than The National Average. A new study by the city's Health Department found more than a quarter of adult residents are infected with the herpes virus. According to the study, 26 percent of city residents have the virus that causes genital herpes, an incurable sexually-transmitted infection that can cause painful genital sores and can double a person's risk for HIV. Nationally, 19 percent of the population has the infection, according to the department. More specifically, the study showed that the rate is higher among women than men - 36 percent compared to 19 percent - and was higher among blacks than whites - 49 percent versus 14 percent, respectively. It also found the rate was higher among gay men than heterosexual men - 32 percent compared to 18 percent. The study was the city's first measurement of those infected with the virus. Herpes is not the only STD above the national rate in New York City. Rates of Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and infectious syphilis were also higher than the national rate. Free NYC condoms are available at locations throughout the city. Call 311 or visit www.nyc.gov/condoms for more information. - Source 06/11/08 - Ron Paul plans his own convention Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a "mini-convention" that could steal some of John McCain's thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination. A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, which coincides with the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in neighboring St. Paul. The campaign hopes the daylong event will "send a message to the Republican Party," Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton tells the Tribune-Review. "There is a growing surge of people out there just craving" for a return "to traditional American government, limited government that places personal liberty first and places an emphasis on personal responsibility and essentially gets out of the way after that," Benton said. "The buzz we get from supporters is that they are very eager to come to St. Paul and very eager to send a strong message." - Source 06/09/08 - As energy bills soar, Japanese test fuel of future As world oil prices skyrocket, thousands of households in energy-poor Japan are taking part in an ambitious experiment to use fuel cells to light and heat their homes. Since the prime minister's official residence became the first house in the world to be equipped with a domestic fuel cell in 2005, about 3,000 households have signed up to have the grey boxes installed outside their homes. The fuel cells produce electricity and hot water through a chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen extracted from natural gas or other fuels. As well as producing electricity, the fuel cells also ensure a steady supply of hot water for households. With no motor inside, the machines -- about the size of a small cupboard -- are also silent. Japan, with almost no natural energy resources of its own, is seeking to reduce its dependence on crude oil imports by developing energy efficient appliances and alternative forms of power generation. The government estimates there could be demand for 550,000 domestic fuel cells a year in Japan within a few years. There are 48 million households in Japan, of which 25 million live in individual houses. For now, however, the system is expensive at about two million yen, or some 19,000 dollars, excluding installation. Research is underway to make the machines as economical as possible thanks to less expensive sources of hydrogen. Thanks to reductions in the cost of components, the companies involved in the project hope to reduce the price of the equipment to one million yen as soon as possible to boost demand, and to cut it further to 500,000 yen in 2015. - Source 06/09/08 - Inventor Claims To Have Developed ‘Super Clean’ Coal Every few minutes, Richard Wolfe poked his gloved hands into coal dust to remove a block from a pottery kiln’s viewport so he could peer at the metal 55-gallon drum inside. A steady whoosh of 1,300-degree flames engulfed the weathered drum and its contents, the ingredients for what the scientist called “super clean” coal. "What we’re doing is taking the coal apart and putting it back better than it was naturally,” he told his audience of four coal industry insiders who met with him on a recent Saturday in a dusty barn in Lebanon, Va. He said it burns hotter than coal and can power generators that make electricity, but without spewing as much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air as regular coal. The same chunk also could be used in the steel industry, home heating or even water purification. Simply put, carbonite is the combination of two types of coals heated at high temperatures with a secret catalyst. Wolfe declined to name the catalyst because he intends to patent both the process and the product. The byproduct of Wolfe’s kiln-based cooking process is methane gas, the main ingredient for natural gas, which often is used to fire steam boilers at electric plants. The orange-yellow methane gas could be seen through the kiln viewport rising from the drum after less than an hour into the burning process. It’s one byproduct that can be scraped from carbonite for resale. Gas to power cars and oil - just like the black gold shipped from the Middle East - can be extracted from the carbonite. After all, oil eventually becomes coal, Wolfe explained. What sets carbonite apart is that it produces 25 percent less carbon dioxide than natural coal, half as much sulphur dioxide and no mercury. The gas and oil are two more byproducts to squeeze from Wolfe’s invention. And all of carbonite’s ingredients can be found in Southwest Virginia and other parts of America. - Source 06/09/08 - Vancouver inventor charged up about electric car Jim Milner plans to change the world with two prototype cars, designed in Vancouver. One is his ElectriCar, a four-door, four-seat, plug-in hybrid car ready to hit the highway in about a year. The first 100 cars will be sold as “kit cars,” assembled and driven away one at a time, for between $20,000 and $30,000 each. Mass production will come later. His other invention is the AirCar, a Jetsons-style car that runs on gasoline, and is designed to drive the highways at up to 85 mph and fly at 200 mph for up to 1,000 miles. It’ll probably cost a driver-pilot about half a million dollars. The ElectriCar runs now, experimentally, while the AirCar hasn’t left the ground. It’s still in the modeling stage. “The flying car will change the world for one-tenth of 1 percent of the people,” he said. “But the electric car can change it for 10 percent of the people.” Both prototypes will be available for public viewing during a spring rollout at Pearson Field, 1115 E. Fifth St., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 14. Milner will talk about the vehicles then. Many other airplanes will be shown and aircraft parts will be laid out in a swap meet at that time. Built of fiberglass on a steel frame, the ElectriCar will cover 100 miles on two hours of battery power, he said. It can be recharged at night in the garage. To travel more than 100 miles, the ElectriCar will come equipped with a 10 horsepower, gasoline-powered generator to recharge on the run. An hour’s charging will consume a gallon of gas. “The gasoline generator will come on when the batteries get low and then charge for an hour,” he said. “And then you’ll have another hour of running time on battery. In effect, the ElectriCar will require no gasoline for short runs and will achieve about 120 miles per gallon on long trips, he said. “We’re aiming to have the gas efficiency above 100 miles per gallon, because that number gets people’s attention,” he added. “Right now we’re using two 48-volt direct-current motors that put out 40 horsepower. We have lead-acid batteries. I’m pretty sure we’ll change to AC (alternating-current) motors because they are more efficient. But DC motors are easier to come by and cheap,” he said. - Source 06/09/08 - Latest 'Green' Power Generation - Your Feet "Remember those ideas that suggested hooking gym machines to the power grid? Well, the Times is reporting that something like this to harness free energy is about to become a reality - the footfall of trudging shoppers is to become the latest source of emission-free energy. 'Engineers who have modelled the effects of the technology at Victoria Underground station in central London have calculated that the 34,000 travellers passing through every hour could power 6,500 lightbulbs. ... The plans for heel-strike generation follow successful trials last year at a bridge in the Midlands where generators converted energy from trains passing above into electricity powering a flood detector.' Possibly the most important thing for the readership is at the end: 'There could also be a range of domestic uses, for example powering iPods by plugging them into batteries placed in the owners' heels, using technology which is already available.' Obviously you'd have to get up and walk around, but, as they say, it's the thought that counts." - Source 06/09/08 - Why the Next President Needs a Powerful Science Adviser The tenure of George W. Bush marks a new nadir. On the few science-related issues the administration has cared about-stem cells and climate change were on the short list-it had largely set its course before the arrival of its new science adviser John H. Marburger III some nine months after Bush first took office. The administration, moreover, stripped the job of the title “special assistant to the president,” a reminder that the adviser would never be part of the inner circle. Nevertheless, hopes rose with the appointment of the well-regarded physicist and former head of Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. “As both scientist and administrator, John H. Marburger III tries to bring needed perspective into a White House not thought to be particularly interested in science,” read a headline for a profile published in Scientific American in June 2002. Marburger continues to plow ahead with elaborate rationales that acknowledge in one breath the reality of global warming and in the next explain why “adaptation” to rising temperatures (think pineapple farming in North Da­kota) needs to receive more attention. He has also assumed the role of the disembodied, neutral voice that quietly corrects the boss’s gaffes. Yes, evolution is the “cornerstone of modern biology.” No, intelligent design is not a scientific concept (comments he made the day after Bush twice said that both should be taught in schools). We can only hope that the next president, whether Democrat or Republican, will not relegate the science adviser-and the entire scientific endeavor-to the status of afterthought. Once elected, the new chief executive should hire a leading scientist, perhaps one with Marburger’s credentials though not with his compliant, technocratic demeanor. In collaboration with the rest of the community, the official should be allowed to assume a prominent, unimpeded role in helping to influence the crafting of policies that address climate change, missile defense and stem cells. - Source 06/09/08 - Could Zeppelin's airships soon be gracing our skies again? The Zeppelin NT, built from endowment money left behind by German airship pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, will make further test flights around Friedrichshafen over the coming months, before flying to London - where a former contestant from The Apprentice, Rory Laing, plans to offer tourist joyrides over the capital for £150 a throw. Environmentalists like George Monbiot cite their frugal use of fuel when compared to other forms of flight. They are also quiet and fly at low altitude, at around 4,000ft compared with 35,000ft, further lessening their environmental impact. Although they are relatively slow, typically travelling at 125 mph - as quick as a high-speed train, but still needing about 43 hours to cross the Atlantic - most need no runway and could be deployed without need for further airport expansion. The NT uses "vectored thrust", which is in principle the same ability to direct its thrust in much the same way as a Harrier jump jet. This is important, because one thing holding the airship back is it vulnerability to wind, especially gusts. Most traditional airships need a dozen people to tie it to a mast; the NT, just three. The trouble though with the buzz of a zeppelin revival is a simple one: carrying capacity. The Zeppelin NT has a passenger capacity of just 12, plus two crew. The Aeroscraft, more ambitious offering, could be adapted to manage anything up to 180. (A 747 carries about 460 people.) - Source 06/09/08 - Waste Not - Gray Power, using 'Junk' Energy One of the few people who’s been making money from recycled steam is Tom Casten, the chairman of Recycled Energy Development. Casten, a former Eagle Scout and marine, has railed against the waste of energy for 30 years; he says the mere sight of steam makes him sick. When Casten walks into an industrial plant, he told me, he immediately begins to reconfigure the pipes in his head, totting up potential energy savings. Steam, of course, can be cycled through a turbine to generate electricity. Heat, which in some industrial kilns reaches 7,000F, can be used to produce more steam. Furnace exhaust, commonly disposed of in flares, can be mixed with oxygen to create the practical equivalent of natural gas. Even differences in steam pressure between one industrial process and another can be exploited, through clever placement of turbines, to produce extra watts of electricity. By making use of its “junk energy,” an industrial plant can generate its own power and buy less from the grid. Casten wants to help everyone see such possibilities, so he’s been combining EPA emissions figures with Google Earth images to let investors “peer” into smokestacks and visualize the wasted energy. Capture some of the heat and pressure they lose, and the U.S. could take four coal-fired power plants offline (out of roughly 300). - Source 06/09/08 - Intense Pressure regenerates Cartilage Bioengineers at Rice University have discovered that intense pressure -- similar to what someone would experience more than a half-mile beneath the ocean's surface -- stimulates cartilage cells to grow new tissue with nearly all of the properties of natural cartilage. The new method, which requires no stem cells, may eventually provide relief for thousands of arthritis sufferers. "This tissue-engineering method holds promise not only for cartilage but also for tissues to repair bladders, blood vessels, kidneys, heart valves, bones and more," said lead researcher Kyriacos Athanasiou, Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Bioengineering. Cartilage, a tissue in the human body that cannot heal itself, has long been a target of tissue engineers. Cartilage is the skeleton's shock absorber, and its stiffness, strength and other mechanical properties derive not from living cartilage cells but from the densely woven matrix of collagen and proteoglycan that surrounds them. This extracellular matrix, or ECM, is produced during cartilage development in children, but cannot be repaired following injury in adulthood. Elder said, "By combining high pressure and growth factors, we were able to more than triple the biomechanical properties of the cartilage. We're not sure why they reinforce one another, but we do not get the same results when we apply them independently." - Source 06/09/08 - Virgin Galactic Spaceline: Mega-Mothership Set for Rollout Debut Rollout of Scaled Composites' mega-mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, is anticipated late July in Mojave, California - the first phase of a project to create a private space travel business - SPACE.com has learned in an exclusive interview. WhiteKnightTwo is a specially designed jet carrier aircraft, built to haul the passenger and crew-filled SpaceShipTwo to release altitude of roughly 50,000 feet. Once on its own, SpaceShipTwo guns itself on a suborbital trek to over 68 miles (109 kilometers) high, reaching a speed of just over three times the speed of sound, and then returns its six rubber-necking tourists and two pilots back to Earth. Some 254 people have plopped down cash to earn priority seating onboard SpaceShipTwo in the first couple of years of suborbital flying, Whitehorn explained. "They've paid up-front between $20,000 and $200,000 ... and we've got about $36 million, as of today, in the bank." - Source 06/09/08 - Flavored Stem Cells - Caution on stem cell therapy A single organ may contain more than one type of adult stem cell - a discovery that complicates prospects for using the versatile cells to replace damaged tissue as a treatment for disease. Adult stem cells are "undifferentiated" cells that can become any type of cell in the organ in which they are found. Medical researchers hope to transplant adult stem cells to treat various diseases. Examples include placing adult stem cells in the pancreas to replace damaged insulin-producing cells, in the heart to replace cardiac muscle cells killed by heart attack, and in the brain to replace dopamine-producing cells damaged in Parkinson's disease patients. The new discovery "is important because people are talking about stem cell therapy; they want to stick in stem cells to treat disease," says Capecchi, a winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. "People always thought about a uniform stem cell population in each organ, but now we are saying there are multiple stem cell populations in a given organ, so if you're going to do therapy, you have to recognize this complexity," adds Capecchi, co-chair and distinguished professor of human genetics at the University of Utah and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Sangiorgi, a postdoctoral fellow in human genetics, adds: "There are probably different stem cells in the small intestine doing different things." If more than one kind of adult stem cell is required to generate the intestinal lining, "it wouldn't be surprising to see it is true for other organs as well," Capecchi says. - Source 06/09/08 - Star power for the Uno Smaller than a motorcycle, the Uno uses two wheels side by side to provide stability while the rider shifts weight to accelerate, stop and turn. See it at the-uno-tomorrows-transportation.com. Gulak took his bike to the National Motorcycle Show in Toronto in March where it caused a stir and caught writer Glenn Roberts' eye. He wrote about the Uno for his Barrie-based magazine Motorcycle Mojo and posted it. That prompted 10 million hits and crashed the site. The buzz prompted calls from international media and piqued the interest of Tonight Show star Jay Leno. The inspiration for the road bike came during a family trip to China, where Gulak was struck by the dense pollution and overcrowding. He put off going to university for one year while he threw everything he had - and about $50,000 of his parents' money - into reworking the bike. If successful, he's hoping to sell them for $6,000. - Source 06/09/08 - Pork becomes 'earmarks' - 11,000 of them The practice of decorating legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects and federal contracts is still thriving on Capitol Hill - despite public outrage that helped flip control of Congress two years ago. More than 11,000 of those "earmarks," worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers' money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington's culture of money, influence and politics. Now comes an election-year encore. Millions of the dollars support lobbying firms that help companies, universities, local governments and others secure what critics like Republican presidential candidate John McCain call pork-barrel spending. The law forbids using federal grants to lobby, but lobbyists do charge clients fees that often equal 10 percent of the largesse. Earmark winners and their lobbyists often reward their benefactors with campaign contributions. For many members of Congress, especially those on the Appropriations committees, such as Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., campaign donations from earmark-seeking lobbyists and corporate executives are the core of their fundraising. Rules forbid lawmakers from raising campaign funds from congressional offices, but members and their aides sometimes find ways to skirt them. "You can ask any lobbyist in town. You bring a new client in to see a member and everything is nice-nice and you have a good meeting and everybody's exchanging business cards," said another lobbyist who focuses on earmarks. "Within 48 hours, the clients and their lobbyist - me - will get a fundraising phone call." That lobbyist requested anonymity, saying there could be no conversation on the subject without it. - Source 06/09/08 - Why oil prices will tank Arguments that $4-a-gallon gas (or even higher) is here to stay are dead wrong. Housing's boom-and-bust cycle tells you why. A big swath of the market isn't really paying that $125 a barrel number you hear about seemingly every hour. In China, India and the Middle East, governments are heavily subsidizing oil for their consumers and corporations, leading to rampant over-consumption - and driving up prices even more. But sooner or later the world won't keep paying those prices: Eventually, the price must fall back to the cost of that last barrel to clear the market. It takes a while to develop new supplies of oil, but the signs of a surge are already in place. Shale oil costing around $70 a barrel is now being produced in the Dakotas. Tar sands are attracting investment in Canada, also at around $70. New technology could soon minimize the pollution caused by producing oil from our super-plentiful supplies of coal. "History suggests that when there's this much money to be made, new supplies do get developed," says Brown. That's just the supply side of the equation. Demand should start to decline as well, albeit gradually. - Source 06/09/08 - With U.S. in slump, dual citizenship in EU countries attracts Americans The creation of the European Union and its thriving economy is very appealing for Americans in a global economy. "With an EU passport, I can live and work in 27 countries," said Suzanne Mulvehill of Lake Worth. "With a U.S. passport, I can live and work in one." Americans can claim citizenship in any of the 27 European countries that are in the EU based on the nationality of their parents, or in some cases, grandparents and great-grandparents. Citizenship in one of those countries allows you to live and work in any EU nation. Since the United States doesn't keep statistics on dual citizens, it's impossible to know exactly how many people have applied for citizenship in Europe. But it's estimated that more than 40 million Americans are eligible for dual citizenship, and a growing number of Americans want to try their luck elsewhere. Dual citizenship once viewed as unpatriotic. One of the biggest advocates of dual citizenship is Temple University professor and author Peter Spiro, who believes that defining one's identity by his citizenship is a thing of the past. "There are really no harms caused by individuals having additional citizenship these days," Spiro said. "It's the wave of the future, because more and more people are going to have it. It's going to multiply on an exponential basis going forward." "Expand your possibilities. If you can get citizenship, why not?" she said. "The world is a bigger place than America. Look at what technology has done, creating a global economy. That, in my opinion, is what has created this phenomenon." Ireland, Italy and Greece are among the most lenient in terms of letting an individual claim citizenship not just from a parent but from a grandparent or possibly a great-grandparent. Even in countries that allow an individual only to claim descent based on a parent, in many cases the new citizen can pass the citizenship on to his child. The 27 EU Members; Austria - Belgium - Bulgaria - Cyprus - Czech Republic - Denmark - Estonia - Finland - France - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Ireland - Italy - Latvia - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Malta - Netherlands - Poland - Portugal - Romania - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden and the United Kingdom. - Source 06/09/08 - Green fuel from a brown source "Poop is actually a relatively minor portion of the material coming down the pipes," said Ed Torres, the district's director of technical services. "It's mostly food wastes and other organic materials washed down the drain, and all the paper that's flushed down the toilet." While the waste sits in holding tanks, it produces gases, primarily methane. Most of the methane at Orange County's plant in Fountain Valley is filtered, then burned like natural gas for power, he said. Any surplus is sold or burned off. Now the extra methane will be turned into power by an experimental fuel-cell generator developed by FuelCell Energy Inc., which makes pollution-free power plants, and Air Products & Chemicals Inc., the biggest U.S. supplier of industrial gases. Fuel cells are like giant batteries. The stationary fuel-cell generator at the plant will use chemical catalysts to split hydrogen off each methane molecule. Most of the hydrogen will be converted to electric power and used on site. A smaller amount will be siphoned off for use in automobiles equipped with smaller fuel cells, which convert the gas to electricity to run the engine. The experimental generator is unique because it can produce three types of power, said Ed Kiczek, business director for hydrogen energy systems at Allentown, Pa.-based Air Products. It will yield enough hydrogen for 50 fuel-cell car fill-ups a day and can make 250 kilowatts of electricity, he said. In addition, heat resulting from the process is captured for use in the facility's climate-control system. If the experimental model is a success, Air Products may develop one big enough to produce hydrogen for as many as 400 vehicle refills and two megawatts of power, Kiczek said. The goal of FuelCell Energy, based in Danbury, Conn., is to sell similar fuel-cell generators for about $3,000 per kilowatt they produce, said Chris Bentley, executive vice president. - Source 06/09/08 - Scissoring Grass and getting your Exercise Reel mowers, also known as cylinder or push mowers, have four to eight spiral steel blades arranged in a reel at an angle perpendicular to the ground. As you push the mower, the reel turns and blades of grass are wedged between it and the cutting bar. The grass is snipped in a scissor-like motion, which prevents the ragged edges caused by most power mowers that use a vacuum to pull up blades of grass while cutting. Sealing the grass blade keeps moisture in and helps prevent lawn diseases. “It actually cuts grass instead of beating it off. Ragged edges promote disease, whereas a properly sharpened reel mower gives you a nice, clean cut that some would say is a superior cut,” said Bill Round of Round’s Hardware. Reel mowers produce a natural mulch by dispersing clippings in a spray (as opposed to clumping) that release nutrients into soil if left on the lawn, though some people prefer to rake up the clippings. - Source 06/09/08 - Levitating train from L.A. to Las Vegas gets boost Plans for a levitating train from Las Vegas to Disneyland can move forward under a transportation bill signed by President Bush on Friday that frees up $45 million for the futuristic project. Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S. The train is meant to ease traffic on increasingly clogged Interstate 15, the main route for the millions of Southern Californians who make the 250-plus-mile drive to Las Vegas each year. There is no train on the route-Amtrak's Desert Wind between Los Angeles and Las Vegas was canceled in 1997 because of low ridership. - Source 06/09/08 - Polaroid intros PoGo inkless portable photo printer The PoGo interfaces with cell phones via a Bluetooth link to print photos captured by the devices' integrated cameras, and via a FireWire-connected PictBridge interface with digital cameras. It's capable of outputting a full-color, 2- by 3-inch photo in under one minute. The ZINK 'paper' contains colorless cyan, yellow and magenta dye crystals that are activated by the heat emitted by the PoGo, making photos instantly ready. The setup evokes memories of Polaroid's original photos that took a few minutes to appear but didn't require a lengthy developing process. The PoGo will be available for sale at Best Buy stores throughout the US starting on July 6, and at Target locations on July 20, priced at $149. Ten sheets of ZINK paper retails for nearly $4, with a 30-pack trading for $10. - Source 06/09/08 - Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa. Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients. Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia - China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas." - Source 06/07/08 - Inventor uses hydrogen to improve gas mileage Ed Hula is a football coach in Buffalo, and a former science teacher. “We've got to do something to help one another out, because the middle and lower class people are really feeling the bite of the gas prices right now,” said Hula. So, after a trial and error, and testing a few prototypes on his own vehicles, Hula came up with what he calls the hydrogen-assist generator. “We've got stainless steel plates in here, and when you conduct electricity through them stainless steel plates, it takes them molecules -- you got two molecules of hydrogen and one oxygen -- and it takes and separates them into gas,” he said. Hula says burning the gas created through this process, called electrolysis, can give your car better gas mileage. He's started a business and hooked up his generator to about 30 vehicles so far. His customers have reported between 28 percent and 72 percent better gas mileage. Jim Lister is a former mechanic who stands behind Hula's generator. “I've only had mine on about 100 miles, but I just checked the gas mileage this morning and I got 5.1 miles per gallon better than what I was, plus I have more power,” said Lister. Rick Hughlett, owner of Rick's Automotive in Springfield, says the hydrogen-assist generator could work, but the additional gases in the system could confuse a vehicle's oxygen sensor and make the car use more gas. “That oxygen sensor is always trying to find 14.7-to-1 air/fuel ratio,” said Hughlett. Hydrogen is highly flammable but Hula says his generator is just as safe or safer than the gas in your car. Hula is selling his hydrogen-assist generators for $600. / What's more, he is selling his generators for only $600 each, plus tax, whereas the cheapest one he has seen on the Internet sells for $1,200. He said he has sold approximately 25 generators to area residents, and reports from those purchases have been favorable. These are on all kinds of vehicles, and one buyer is even trying the idea on diesel generators that generate electricity for a chicken operation. He feels that he has perfected what he calls the hydrogen-assist generator, and has formed a corporation called Hydrogen Assist Enterprises LLC. Those interested in further information can call his business phone number at (417) 993-1111. / (Details and more for a similar DIY conversion in this $15 ebook - JWD) - Source 06/07/08 - Gas-saving tips - fact or fiction? Gas prices got you down? At roughly $4 a gallon, many people are desperately trying to squeeze more miles out of each drop. The best ways are usually the most obvious: reduce your load, resist the urge to drive aggressively, and cut the number of trips you make, for starters. However, there are some unusual tips that might surprise you. Take our short quiz, and find out which tips are true energy savers and which are merely gas station myths. - Source 06/07/08 - Don’t overlook downside of using nuclear power Deputy Science Technology and Innovations Minister Fadillah Yusof said that with the present energy crisis and the increase in greenhouse gases, Malaysia was ready to harness nuclear power for its electricity needs. In our frantic bid to curb global warming, we tend to overlook the downside of nuclear power generation. The Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters in Russia and the US respectively are often argued as one-offs, but what is never highlighted are the smaller nuclear accidents that occur alarmingly on a regular basis at the world’s numerous power plants. Nuclear power plants and nuclear waste would be potential targets for terrorist attacks and if such attacks were to transpire, it would be catastrophic for the whole world. It takes many years to plan and build a new nuclear power station. The irony of the matter is that uranium (the base element) is a depleting source of energy and may be used up in the next four to five decades, after which we would be left high and dry. It is certainly not a sustainable source of energy. And just what are you going to do with the extremely toxic nuclear waste that would be produced? Experts tell us that its extreme toxicity remains for over 10,000 years. How would you prevent a potentially cataclysmic environmental contamination disaster? Bury it deep into the earth? But it would still be open for future warmongers to dig up to make bombs because the technology to make bombs is closely related to that of generating energy. We should explore other options of energy production through renewable sources. - Source 06/07/08 - How to kick the carbon habit? In 2007, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a key component in regulating the Earth's climate, passed 382 parts per million (ppm). It has never risen above 300 ppm over the past half-million years. Many scientists are certain that as the figure rises Mankind is edging closer to triggering runaway climate change, a catastrophe that could last hundreds of years and our descendants would be powerless to stop. According to the report "State of the World 2008--Innovations for a Sustainable Economy" released by the World watch Institute earlier this year, the first step in establishing the viability of a climate-safe energy strategy is assessing the available resources and the potential role they might play. A global assessment by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that the greatest potential is in buildings, the most basic element of the energy economy, which could be improved with better insulation, more-efficient lighting and better appliances. On the supply side, one of the low-carbon energy sources receiving much attention these days is nuclear power, which already plays a major role in some countries. Taken as a largely carbon-free energy source that could in theory help phase out fossil fuels, more than 300 nuclear plants currently provide 15 percent of the world's electricity. To seriously de-carbonize the current energy economy, the greatest challenge perhaps lies in how to integrate the new energy resources into the existing energy infrastructure that was designed around fossil fuels. the World watch Institute recommends a combination of three strategies: add local generating capacity using micro turbines and fuel cells; move to digital "smart" grids that are more flexible in their ability to balance demand and supply; and develop the capacity to store energy economically. A "smart" power grid could respond in real time to decisions made by users. For instance, it could lower the electricity supply when the customer is not at home, and it could also allow unneeded devices to be turned off when electricity prices are high or renewable resources are not available. The new generation of micro-power generators, such as fuel cells, could further aid the "smart" electricity grids. In Japan, many families are generating electricity with solar cells which send power to the local grids and draw from them at the same time. - Source 06/07/08 - HP Licenses High-Efficiency Solar Tech to Speed Innovation Xtreme Energetics' solar products collect even more energy than typical solar cells, whose electronics impede some of the light flowing to the solar collectors. Colin Williams, Xtreme's CEO, said the solar cells will be at least twice as efficiency of a traditional solar panel. Using HP's transparent transistors also opens up new frontiers for where solar panels can be placed. These new products -- which are expected to hit the market within 2 years -- can be placed on building facades as well as on rooftops, since they allow the building's natural color to be visible through the panels. Because more of the building will be useful for collecting solar energy, Williams said this technology will make solar power a realistic option for even the most energy-intensive facilities, like data centers. Dan Croft, HP's director of Intellectual Property Licensing, said there are three key attributes to this technology: in addition to the innovation around transparency, the technology was envisioned to be manufactured in large areas -- up to 1 square meter at a time -- and they have to perform well to be useful. - Source 06/07/08 - Japanese Automaker, U.S. Firm Team Up To Convert Cars to Electric Power "Our car is very different from a gasoline car in that it uses no gasoline, it's all electric, lithium battery and with a proprietary battery management system by Hybrid Technologies," Ron Cerven said. he cars, like the Toyota Yaris, look like any other until you peek under the hood. Inside, the gas-powered engine has been replaced by a powerful electric motor that is powered by a stack of lithium batteries. In the company's plant in Morrisville, North Carolina, many familiar car models are being transformed into electric vehicles: The Toyota Yaris, Chrysler PT Cruiser and the SmartCar. Cerven says the electric cars offer consumers a brand-new driving experience. "The first time you ever drive an electric car, (you notice) how much road noise you hear from tires and stuff," Cerven said. Cervan says the cars powered by Hybrid Technologies are a big leap forward from earlier electric vehicles. Cervan says, "I think in the past, the electric vehicle ware held back by the batteries. Battery technology in the past 10 years has come a long way. We were running at about 600 pounds [72 kilograms] of batteries to get the same mileage we use to be running at about 2,400 pounds [1088 kilograms] of batteries," he said. Cerven says lithium powered cars are just as powerful as vehicles fueled by gas. For example, with ten packs of these lithium batteries, a PT Cruiser can accelerate to 100 kilometers per hour in seven point two seconds, rivaling the performance of a six cylinder, gas-powered car. A six-hour electrical charge provides enough power to drive the car nearly 200 kilometers. These electric vehicles are not cheap. But Linda Hill, the marketing and public relations manager of Hybrid Technologies, believes after factoring in the gas and maintenance savings over seven to 10 years, she believes the vehicles are competitive. - Source 06/07/08 - Daredevil sets flight record in 'wingsuit' A Swiss daredevil set a record for the longest flight ever undertaken with a wingsuit on an extraordinary 17.6km journey over Ireland. Gegenschatz also beat the flight time of the region's regular passenger aircraft, which travels this route daily in seven minutes, by a full 75 seconds. In order to complete the distance, he needed to exit his sky diving aircraft at an altitude of 4,500 metres. He flew across the Atlantic waters at an average speed of 250kmh with the aid of a strong tailwind. He released his parachute 200 metres above the mainland before touching down on the runway, clocking a time of 5 minutes and 45 seconds. In an unrelated story, dozens of Irishmen give up drinking simultaneously after seeing a man flying over their local pub. (via fark.com) - Source 06/07/08 - Cooling Cities with water In a time of rising energy costs and efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, it makes sense to take a serious look at alternatives to traditional fossil fuel sources of energy. One of those alternatives for Milwaukee could be to find a way to use Lake Michigan's waters to cool downtown. Toronto, another Great Lakes city, uses such a system. Built four years ago at a cost of about $128 million (in U.S. dollars), the system relies on three pipes that extend about three miles into Lake Ontario. The pipes suck cool water from a depth of about 300 feet, saving Toronto enough electricity each year to power 4,200 homes and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, according to estimates from the builder. Nor is the concept new here. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee draws Lake Michigan water to help cool campus buildings, although the school uses a different system from the one built in Toronto. Lake Michigan is shallower than Lake Ontario close to shore, Milwaukee doesn't have the same access to deep cool water. Building such a system could be prohibitively expensive and may not work. - Source 06/07/08 - BMW designer invents Watercone It may not exactly fall under the usual automotive news but a BMW Group employee was honoured for his solution for a cheap, mobile device for producing drinking water. On May 26 in Brussels, an international jury presented the National Energy Globe Award 2007 to BMW Group designer Stephan Augustin for his invention of the so called Watercone, a device for generating clean drinking water. The Watercone is a solar-powered cone-shaped desalinator that generates fresh drinking water from salt or brackish water. With its rigid outer skin, this plastic cone can be used floating on water or on damp ground. The sunrays shining on the Watercone cause the water to evaporate under the cone and condense on the inside of the cone. The droplets of water then accumulate in a collector trough. The water can be poured out of the opening at the tip of the Watercone into a container or drunk directly. The water is purified through the condensation as if it were undergoing a single-stage distillation process. Around 1.6 litres of drinking water a day can be obtained by using this invention. This means that the Watercone could play a major part in solving a number of problems. UNICEF experts estimate that 5,000 children still die each day from diarrheal diseases caused by dirty drinking water. Using the Watercone, people living in coastal regions in Africa, Asia, and South America can also obtain drinking water from sea water. In addition, this device also eliminates heavy metals and other pollutants when used near rivers. The Watercone is made from hard-wearing, unbreakable Bayer Makrolon polycarbonate with an anti-UV coating and has a guaranteed working life of at least five years. The Watercone was even tested in the BMW wind tunnel showing it could cope with wind speeds of up to 55 km/h without any problems. This means that it is largely unaffected by weather. CARE Deutschland carried out a pilot project in the coastal town of Zinjibar in Yemen, where it generally rains only three times a year. - Source 06/07/08 - U.S. Oil Independence; Not: Way, way back in ancient times, all the way back to 1973, the members of OPEC threw the U.S. into a recession by establishing an oil embargo. In other words, they cut us off from their oil and the U.S. suffered its first fuel shortage since the end of WWII. Richard Nixon gave a dandy speech in November of 1974. Mr. Nixon was on a roll that day and trotted out his “Project Independence.” The United States, Nixon asserted, should be independent of all oil producing countries, “including our Canadian friends,” by 1976. Nixon went on to promise massive public funding for the exploration of American’s remaining energy resources-Alaskan oil and gas, offshore oil reserves, nuclear energy and synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale. Well, if that won’t do it what would? Mr. Nixon’s plan worked so well that by 1977, the United States was importing a new record high of 46.5 percent of the oil that we needed to fuel our vehicles, heat our homes, and run our industry. Okay just a minor setback, but have no fear, government is here. In reaction to the continual rising prices and elevated levels of imports, our Nation established a Department of Energy, spent billions of dollars on researching and finding new sources of energy supply, and redesigned our cars, houses, and factories to make them more energy efficient. This heroic effort of increasing government while spending billions of dollars and ignoring all geological and scientific evidence to the contrary, has over the past 31 years, been extremely effective at increasing our foreign oil dependence to 75%. You will note that all of the solutions touted in 1973 are the same ones that are being rerun in 2008. The problem in 1973 was of course that oil is finite, while the problem in 2008 is that oil is finite. How good is government forecasting? The Annual Energy Outlook 1998 (AEO98) reference case, projected that net dependence would exceed 50 percent in 2000 and rise to 66 percent by 2020. How about 75% in 2008? This is your tax money at work. - Source 06/07/08 - New club drug: Preparation H? Some macho dudes at NYC clubs rub allegedly Preparation H on their torsos to temporarily shrink fat deposits and look buff. It's apparently an old competitive body-building trick. From ABC News: "The bodybuilders I know use it on their obliques -- their love handles -- to take away any lingering water weight before shows," (club bouncer Rob) Fitzgerald told ABC News. "The guys in the clubs heard about this, and the use of it spread virally like some kind of Internet meme." Preparation H contains a medication called phenylephrine HCL that -- when used for the drug's intended purpose -- will shrink the swollen tissues of hemorrhoids. It works by constricting the nearby blood vessels that feed blood and fluid to the area. But the ingredient doesn't discriminate what kind of tissue it will shrink, hence the underground beauty tips of applying Preparation H under the eyes, on love handles or other places. None of which Wyeth, the makers of Preparation H, support. (via boingboing.net) - Source 06/07/08 - Video - Designing the Tata Nano Engineers at Indian car maker Tata have been putting the finishing touches to the world's cheapest car. It costs about $2,500 - about half of its nearest current rival. - Source 06/07/08 - More about On-Stage Telepresence Experience and Video link It works by combining the telepresence display technology of UK based Musion with the ultra high definition camera and codec technology that powers the Cisco TelePresence offering and the Cisco Human Network. A sheet of Musion's patented, transparent Eye-liner foil is stretched across the stage. The Musion system takes a captured image and shines it down to a mirror on the ground with an ultra-bright projector. The image then bounces off the mirror and is displayed on the Eye-liner foil. - Source 06/07/08 - Water on the Moon? If water is present, it will dramatically reduce the cost of a lunar base. The Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission is intended to test for this water by impacting the lunar surface with its empty rocket upper stage, and looking for water in the ejected plume. The current controversy centers around recent radar observations at higher resolution than the previous studies. These observations show high CPR's in crater walls and floors, but they are not correlated with the permanently shadowed regions. They are correlated with the rocky surfaces and ejecta blankets around young craters, and with the inner walls of some of the larger craters. They definitely do not indicate large deposits of pure ice - there are no skating rinks on the Moon, as one scientist put it. - Source 06/05/08 - A need fuels a gas-saving idea A distilled-water storage tank is part of the hydrogen-powered system used on David Hansen’s 1997 SUV. He says that instead of 8 miles per gallon in the city, the modified vehicle gets about 18. He said engines lose 30 to 40 percent of gasoline energy through exhaust, but the hydrogen supplement allows his engine to burn 100 percent of the gasoline. Hansen added a device to the Yukon that creates hydrogen and combines it with the oxygen input to the engine, which helps the motor maximize gasoline performance. His system requires a small amount of distilled water to power the hydrogen generator and uses distilled vinegar to keep the generator's plates from corroding. Additional gauges monitor the efficiency of the generator and help the system work well in Florida summer temperatures. "The motor now runs cooler and with less carbon buildup, which ultimately will increase engine life," Hansen said. "The system has multiple built-in safeguards to make sure that the driver can operate the vehicle without concern." ansen said he still isn't sure he wants to pursue a patent and open a business. Instead, he has posted his findings on his Web site, htgsystems.com, and he will allow feedback to determine his next move. - Source 06/05/08 - Hydrogen-fueled engine powers pickup truck Galesburg inventor James Hunt’s hydrogen fuel generation system has been successfully used to power a pickup truck. Dave Kniss, vice president of Hunt’s Akvo Energy America, said the hydrogen-fueled engine was recently used in a 1991 Chevy pickup that was driven for 15 to 20 minutes on the north side of Monmouth. The fuel also has been successfully used in two cars and a generator inside a building, Kniss said. Kniss, who is Hunt’s father-in-law, said one 3-second burst of electricity combined with ordinary drinking water, which releases hydrogen, was all that was needed for the successful outside test run. Although the test was short, Kniss said that was because the truck was not licensed to be on a street or highway with this type of engine. Most of the drive was in circles in a field across from Akvo Energy’s former location. “If we would have created another burst of energy, it would have run for a longer period of time,” he said. The process uses electricity to hit water from a reservoir tank. A bright flash of light occurs each time the electricity strikes. Hydrogen is extracted via plasmatic induction, a form of electrolysis. Hunt explained last November that the hydrogen gas can be ported into car and truck engines, providing fuel at virtually no cost. The system also uses reserve batteries and solar cells. Non-radioactive carbon rods are another part of the system that Hunt said will power vehicles for up to 1 years on one fill up. With global warming a concern these days - along with high energy costs - there’s more good news. Hunt’s system emits water vapor, rather than harmful carbons emitted from gasoline or diesel engines. - Source 06/05/08 - RepRap universal constructor achieves self-replication Adrian (left) and Vik (right) with a parent RepRap machine, made on a conventional rapid prototyper, and the first complete working child RepRap machine, made by the RepRap on the left. The child machine made its first successful grandchild part at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK, a few minutes after it was assembled. RepRap does not fully assemble copies of itself, but produces the 3D-printed plastic components necessary to assemble another copy. It has also successfully produced other plastic goods like sandals and coat hooks. - Source 06/05/08 - In Europe, they're up in arms over gasoline prices too The Associated Press reports that European drivers are joining Americans in fighting for lower energy costs. Drivers of private and commercial vehicles have staged protests and related demonstrations in France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, among other European countries, as drivers deal with prices that have rocketed to the $8-10 per gallon range. In France, last week, more than 200 farmers and truck drivers blocked a fuel depot in Villette-de-Vienne, The New York Times reported. The four-year rise in oil prices that has reduced U.S. disposable income has not exempted Europe. Given higher per gallon taxes across much of the continent, Europe may become the first major economic region in the world to see an average $10 per gallon gasoline price, if current trends continue. Taxes in Europe comprise 40-60% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data; in the United States taxes account for about 12% of gasoline's retail price. - Source 06/05/08 - Wind Energy Hung Out to Dry Wind energy in the U.S. is having its best year ever. Wind generating capacity now exceeds 18,000 megawatts, and nearly 6,000 megawatts are under construction. That’s only the beginning of what could be a long wind energy boom. The U.S. Department of Energy recently put out a technical report estimating that wind energy could supply 20 percent of the nation’s power supply over the next three decades. That could chop the electricity sector’s carbon dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2030 - a significant down payment on necessary emissions reduction goals. Progress could come to a screeching halt, however, when the clock strikes 12 on New Year’s Eve. That’s when the production tax credit for which wind and certain other renewables are eligible turns into a pumpkin. If that happens, look for wind development to crash in 2009. It’s happened before. Wind energy projects require a high up-front investment. Lining up the financing is difficult when developers and their bankers can’t be sure about the economics of a project when tax credits pop in and out of existence like virtual particles. Three times in the past decade, the credit has expired, causing wind development the following year to plunge between 73 and 93 percent. - Source 06/05/08 - The irony of the rat race .... A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them. "Not very long," answered the Mexican. "But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American. The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs...I have a full life." The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise." "How long would that take?" asked the Mexican. "Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American. "And after that?" "Afterwards? That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!" "Millions? Really? And after that?" "After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a siesta, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends. - from the Net 06/05/08 - Global Food Crisis? Does the end of cheap energy mean the end of abundant and affordable food? With oil becoming more expensive, it becomes harder to sustain intensive agricultural practices and harder to transport the food produced. In addition, increased demand for bio-fuels, world population growth, climate change, and pollution are all expected to impact the food supply in coming years. It's not unusual these days to find media coverage of rising food costs and a potential global food crisis in our near future. The question is, how concerned should we be, and what can we do to prevent such a crisis? Is the explosion of population in recent years (from only 2 billion in 1927 to nearly 6.6 billion in 2007) a looming demographic nightmare for younger generations, or will world population stabilize at a manageable level? - Source 06/05/08 - Air Force officials look at hydrogen as potential fuel source Some Robins Air Force Base Airmen may be among the first to see the use of hydrogen-power in their daily lives, after the recent addition of a Quantum HyHauler Plus and a hydrogen-powered forklift. The HyHauler is a trailer-mounted hydrogen fuel dispensing system. It uses only 0.2 gallons of tap water per hour and converts that water into hydrogen using electrolysis, where it is stored in 20 two-kilogram, carbon-wrapped hydrogen storage tanks. "It cracks the hydrogen from the water, producing hydrogen and oxygen," said Ernie Powell, an APTO engineer. The hydrogen fuel cells involved in the project can be used to fuel a vehicle or to provide electricity to a building. The HyHauler Plus is used to create and dispense the hydrogen. The HyHauler Plus produces about 2 kilograms a day, which is more than the 1.8 kilograms of hydrogen required to fuel the forklift for an eight-hour shift. Air Force officials will compare the productivity of a traditional battery-powered forklift with the one converted to hydrogen power. "We will test the vehicle to ensure it meets the requirements capabilities for the Air Force," Mr. Mead said. - Source 06/05/08 - Geothermal Electricity Booming in Germany Electricity from geothermal sources is set to soar in Germany -- and all thanks to a law that has made drilling wells deep enough to hit the hot temperature water, which is needed to produce electricity, financially viable. Less than 0.4 percent of Germany's total primary energy supply came from geothermal sources in 2004. But after a renewable energy law that introduced a tariff scheme of EU €0.15 [US $0.23] per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for electricity produced from geothermal sources came into effect that year, a construction boom was sparked and the new power plants are now starting to come online. "Geothermal sources could supply Germany's electricity needs 600 times over," Werner Bussmann, CEO of the German Geothermal Association. "Geothermal electricity has the advantage of being available 24 hours a day, 8000 hours a year, and this makes it a great source of baseload power," Bussmann said. The best geothermal generation opportunities in Germany are located in southern Bavaria - where water of temperatures of 140°C or hotter can be found 5,000 meters below the ground - and in the Upper Rhine region as well as in northern Germany. - Source 06/05/08 - Creeping wave antenna Monitoring medical patients remotely 24 hours a day has always proven to be a difficult proposition due the size of the wireless sensors attached to the patient's body to relay vital signs. A team from Queen's University Belfast has come up with a solution that utilizes the creeping wave effect. The effect applies to electromagnetic waves as they come into contact with solid objects. While the majority of the waves are absorbed by the object, a small amount move along the surface of the object before they continue their path. Since most of the signal sent by conventional biosensors is absorbed by the patient's body, the signal must be strong enough to compensate. The antennas designed by the Queen's University team, though, focus their broadcast laterally instead of inward and outward, maximizing the amount of waves that will travel along patients' bodies via the creeping wave effect and minimizing the amount that are absorbed. These antennas are up to 50 times as efficient as conventional antennas of the same size, broadcasting a stronger signal with less power. The applications to the wireless body area networking, attaching multiple biosensors to patients' bodies, field are obvious, but this technology could be used in other ways. Since the creeping wave antenna is small and wearable, it could conceivably be used to boost low power communication to PDAs, cellphones, or any other portable wireless product. - Source 06/05/08 - Data Retention Proven to Change Citizen Behavior "A new survey shows that data retention laws indeed do influence the behavior of citizens (at least in Germany). 11% had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions and 52% would not use phone or e-mail for confidential contacts. This is the perfect argument against the standard 'I have nothing to hide' argumentation. Surveillance is not only bad because someone might discover some embarrassment. It changes people. 11% at least." - Source 06/05/08 - Sparkle labs - DIY Electronics kit (video) DIY Design Electronics Kit - Harness the power of the electron! Create games, toys, and contraptions with these fundamental components. Follow the easy instructions to make a light detector, LED flasher, noisemaker and more! Once you master the basics, you'll be ready to create your own! Everything you need to get started is right in the box, including switches, buttons, diodes, capacitors. transistors and regulators. Learn the amazing concepts of resistance, capacitance, voltage and current with the step-by-step project manual. Soon, you will be the electronics wizard! Great introduction to electronics for all ages. (via boingboing.net) - Source 06/05/08 - Food production must rise 50 percent by 2030 World food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday at a summit grappling with hunger and civil unrest caused by food price hikes. High fuel costs, speculation, increased demand for meat and dairy products in emerging nations like India and China, and the conversion of crops into biofuel have been blamed for skyrocketing food prices. The soaring prices have widened hunger and sparked riots and protests in several countries in Africa and Asia. "Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls," Ban said. "They only distort markets and force prices even higher." U.N. officials said on Monday that they also intend to request that the United States and other nations phase out subsidies for food-based biofuels, including ethanol. But in his speech Tuesday, Ban only called for "a greater degree of international consensus on biofuels." - Source 06/05/08 - 'Water-Running' Car Gets 100 Miles To The Ounce, Inventor Says Anthony Brown said he shut his fuel injection system down and created the system that can use any type of water with a small amount of gas. He said the car is getting just fuel vapor. "When you separate the water from the oxygen from the hydrogen, it cooks and it cooks down to a brown," Brown said. "We're not having any waste product off of it. Everything is consumed and burned." Local 6 showed video of Brown filling up his vehicle with water and then driving around. Brown said any profit he makes from his invention will go toward helping missionaries around the world. - Source 06/05/08 - Commercial space travel: The next Mt. Everest? Consider the implications for those who choose to go: The Redstone rocket that carried Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on suborbital flights was designed to throw a 500 kiloton nuclear warhead some 200 miles downrange. The Atlas of the Mercury program and the Titan of the Gemini days were designed as Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. "Passengers will be riding a vessel packed with a volatile mix of carefully processed chemical ingredients, thousands of interdependent parts, and extremely sophisticated software. And they will be bound for an inhospitable environment far, far away from where they bought their tickets," Nield said. "Private human space flight is like climbing Mount Everest with a lot farther to fall." The FAA has regulations in place, based on informed consent, where the passenger has to be fully apprised of all the risks involved and then sign a form acknowledging that they know what they are getting into, Nield said. That's why the FAA insists on safety, safety and more safety. That's why Congress approved the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, putting the FAA in charge of regulating commercial human space flight, he added. And as for costs: The most common figure I hear for a suborbital rocket ride is around $200,000, or at least it will be to start. - Source 06/05/08 - Electricity said to be too costly Pennsylvania residents will be overcharged by $5 billion over the next few years because of a flaw in the deregulated electricity market, state officials have alleged in a complaint to federal regulators. The 211-page complaint, filed last week by a multi-state coalition that includes the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, alleges that electric companies are pocketing money that was supposed to pay for the construction of new power plants. - Source 06/03/08 - Strange Lifting Force Used in Novel Airship (Jan, 1931) WHAT is certainly the most unique airship in the world is now under construction in the form of an experimental model in the factory of its inventor in Denver, Colorado. As depicted on these pages, the extraordinary ship will use neither propellers nor gas to keep it in the air, but will depend on a mechanism which its inventor, Edgar R. Holmes, calls the “gyradoscope”. Each horsepower of gyradoscope is expected to lift 1,000 pounds vertically in midair and sustain the load at any desired elevation by regulating the speed, and the inventor expects a machine weighing 2,000 pounds to lift 500 tons. Briefly, the gyradoscope combines gyroscopic action with centrifugal force. As described in the prospectus of the company, the gyradoscope consists of two wheels rotating in opposite directions in the same plane. Each wheel has several weights, the arms of which are connected to eccentrics on each wheel, which propel the weights in opposite directions in such a way that a lifting effect is exerted when the weights are at the top point of travel. The exact mechanism by which this effect is produced is somewhat obscure, but a model of the device already built has been bolted to the floor of a freight elevator, it is claimed, and succeeded in raising and lowering it with ease. In this test a 20-horsepower gasoline engine furnished power. Lifting force exerted by the gyradoscope is likened to that of a ball thrown on the end of a string. The weight of the ball at the moment it draws the string taut exerts a lifting effect on a pencil or other object to which the bottom of the string may be tied. In the gyradoscope the moving weights on the wheels are analogous to the thrown ball. To a casual scrutiny the whole idea seems very much like lifting one’s self by one’s boot straps, but the success attained with models indicates that the inventor may be successful in developing an entirely new type of aircraft. Forward motion is to be supplied by a gyradoscope in horizontal plane, and steering will be accomplished by a similar mechanism. In case of accident to the lifting gyros, which would result in the ship’s dropping like a plummet, auxiliary machines are provided which are kept running at idling speed ready to be called upon in an emergency. Four hydraulic landing feet, one on each corner of the ship, absorb the shock of landing, which is expected to be insignificant since rate of descent is controlled by speed of the gyradoscope. Mr. Holmes, inventor of the gyro-ship, also has the invention of a popular front wheel drive for autos to his credit, as well as a four wheel drive and a caloric steam engine. This latter machine would supply the power for the airship. As developed by Mr Holmes, waste heat from oil combustion is used in the caloric engine to convert water into steam, which drives a turbine, and is then condensed to be used over again. / (This is a 'kinemassic' inertial drive mechanism and is best known with the invention of the Dean Drive. - JWD) - Source 06/03/08 - Nature’s 100 Best Innovations List The Nature’s 100 Best List, a mixture of innovations at various stages of commercialization from the drawing board to imminent arrival in the marketplace, is set to be completed by October 2008 in time for the IUCN Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The Nature’s 100 Best book will be published in May 2009. They include: * Vaccines that survive without refrigeration based on Africa’s ‘resurrection’ plant; * Friction-free surfaces suitable for modern electrical devices gleaned from the slippery skin of the Arabian Peninsula’s sandfish lizard; * New anti-bacterial substances inspired by marine algae found off Australia’s coast that promise a new way of defeating health hazardous bugs without contributing to the threat of increasing bacterial resistance; * Toxic-free fire retardants, based on waste citrus and grape crops inspired by the way animal cells turn food into energy without producing flames-the so-called citric acid or Krebs cycle; * A pioneering water-harvesting system to recycle steam from cooling towers and allowing buildings to collect their own water supplies from the air inspired by the way the Namib Desert beetle of Namibia harvests water from desert fogs; and * Biodegradable, water-tight packaging and water-repellant linings for pipes to tents that mimic the Australian water-holding frog. - Source 06/03/08 - Laminin and Colossians 1:15-17 Here is what the structure of laminin looks like...AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it....if you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see..." Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.' You see....laminins are what hold us together....LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules... Now read Colossians 1:15-17: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things have been created through Him and for Him. "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Coincidence? - Source 06/03/08 - Homemade "SciFi Channel" for classic sf video online This guy really loves science fiction, and REALLY hates the Sci-Fi channel for not airing enough classic SciFi. So he found all sorts of shows online, and has created his own incredibly awesome repository of classic science fiction television show links. As far as I can tell, it's all legal, and there are hundreds of hours of programming to choose from. (via boingboing.net - Rats, at least one site, HULU won't stream outside the US!! - JWD) - Source 06/03/08 - Your Own Inflatable Dome: Make It from a Kit (Jul, 1973) PS brings bubble buildings into the realm of the do-it-yourselfer: Take your choice of kits in three sizes-or start from scratch if you like By A. J. HAND / PS Home Workshop Editor. You’ve read about the new air-supported buildings that can cover hundreds of acres [PS, Mar. "73]. Now take a look at some pneumatics designed with you in mind. They’re inexpensive, easy to build, and adaptable to a whole range of uses. The basic single-skin plastic dome, inflated by a small blower, can be used as a studio, greenhouse, pool cover, outdoor rec room, camping or vacation shelter, portable classroom, or storage facility. - Source 06/03/08 - Ed-Leedskalnin Magnetic Current Illustrated Email received from Max on 06/02/08; "Hi I wanted to share with you and all your readers, Edward Leedskalnins Magnetic Cuurent in Illustration form for anybody wanting to re-create his experiments. I am also open to modifying any of the illustrations if proved to be incorrectly drawn. Would you be willing to spread the word? May the worlds light shine from free energy." / Researchers: Read about magnetic current, what it is, how it is made, what makes it, and the way it runs in the wire. Then you will know what the north and south pole individual magnets can do, and then you will know what electricity is. - Source 06/03/08 - Google to Offer Real-Time Stock Quotes "Today, Google announced that Google Finance will report real-time prices on NASDAQ-listed securities. While real-time stock quotes are not new, they have long encumbered with subscriptions, legal agreements, or pay software. This may be the first free source for real-time quotes." - Source 06/03/08 - Building a Miniature Magnetic Earth "There was an interesting story on NPR this morning about a geophysicist who has constructed a miniature earth to model the earth's dynamo effects. Dan Lathrop, a geophysicist at the University of Maryland, has constructed a 10-foot diameter stainless steel sphere. He intends to fill the sphere with molten sodium and spin the sphere to examine the propensity for the system to generate its own magnetic field. The article includes both video, in which Lathrop spins up the sphere, and audio, including the conversion of magnetic wave functions in prior experiments into audible sound: literally the music of the spheres." - Source 06/03/08 - Top 10 Telephone Tricks With the right tones, keypresses, phone numbers, and know-how, you can skip through or cut off long-winded automated voice systems and humans, access web services by voice, and smartly screen incoming calls. Check out our pick of the 10 best telephony techniques for getting more done in less time over the phone. 1. Trick automated phone bots into thinking your line's dead. 2. Swear like a sailor to skip directly to a human operator. 4. Skip the greeting and get right to the beep with one keypress. 6. Avoid annoying calls with a custom silent ringtone. 8. PayPal money via voice call. 9. Get out of annoying calls and meetings with SorryGottaGo.com sounds and the Popularity Dialer. 10. Avoid the cost of calling 411 with GOOG 411. (details at the link) - Source 06/03/08 - The Gods of Greed They promised economic stability, order and prosperity. But instead the world's bankers have delivered chaos, debt and uncertainty - and then blamed the feeble governments that surrendered control of the global economy to them. In the first of three extracts from their new book, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson explain how the reckless speculation of a super-rich elite has left us all the poorer. Democratically elected governments have, over the past three decades, willingly ceded control of the world economy to a new elite of freebooting super-rich free-market operatives and their colleagues in national and international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. These New Olympians, who earn that title by their remoteness from everyday life and their lack of accountability, have gained this control on a prospectus every bit as false as much of the promotional material for the "exotic securities" of which they are so fond. The charge sheet is as follows: · They promised economic stability - and have delivered chaos and volatility. · They promised an economic order based on enterprise, thrift and personal effort - and have delivered one based on chronic indebtedness and wild speculation. · They promised a "transparent" future in which all costs and prices would be clearly laid out - and have delivered a world of bizarre, occult financial knowledge. · They promised a greatly expanded middle class of property- and share-owning individuals - and have unleashed havoc on professional and white-collar career structures. But then none of this ought to be surprising. The New Olympians are unconcerned with - in fact, hostile to - job security (other than their own), social tranquillity and the traditional aspiration for both the good life and the quiet life. They roll their eyes when they hear that the Detroit car worker, the Argentinian shopkeeper or the Cornish fisherman is complaining that their way of life is under threat. Like it or lump it, the New Olympians say. - Source 06/03/08 - USPS Flex Fuel Vehicles Lowered Fuel Efficiency The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) tried to do the right thing, buying more than 30,000 American-made flex fuel vehicles capable of running on ethanol. However, the vehicles, purchase from 1998 to 2003, ended up decreasing overall fuel efficiency by 29% and increasing gasoline consumption by 1.5 million gallons, according to a USPS study. - Source 06/03/08 - Glowing Prospects in the Coal Sector Oil is not the only energy commodity going up in this market -- just take a look at coal. The price of U.S. coal futures solidly crossed above $100 per ton this month, more than double what they were six months ago. Coal stocks have popped in response. Here are the fundamental forces pushing coal prices even higher and three strategies for investing in this improving sector. - Source 06/03/08 - Biking Disaster - Amazing Photo On June 2nd in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, seven competitors in the cycling race were severely injured after being hit by a drunk driver, one of them died and three others were hospitalized. This amazing photo captured the moment of impact. The drunk driver was arrested after the rest of the participants tried to lynch him. Cyclists were participating in a race from Matamoros to Bagdad Beach, when drunk driver Jesse Campos, a Brownsville, Texas resident, in his Ford Grand Marquis, license 659-FKF from Texas, impacted seven cyclists, even as they were being escorted by Local Transit Officials. - Source 06/03/08 - Lessons from past food crises A burgeoning population. Soaring energy costs. Rising demand for meat. A catastrophic harvest. A sudden run on the grain market - and an 80 percent surge in food prices in three years. A brief run-down of the current world food crisis? Yes, but it also applies to the early 1970s - the last time the collective cupboard was bare. Despite similarities, today's food price shock also has some striking features which sets it apart from past crises. As world leaders gather in Rome Tuesday for a three-day United Nations conference on what steps to take to address the international food crisis, they might study what lessons can be learned from the recent pages of history. - Source 06/03/08 - Scientists sign petition denying man-made global warming More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming. More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming. More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming. A spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, said: “The world’s leading climate experts at the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe that it is greater than 90 per cent likely that human activity is responsible for most of the observed warming in recent decades. That is a pretty strong consensus. - Source 06/01/08 - Engine Runs With Water Thanks to one local high school senior's invention, we may one day find relief at the pump. The Alden Conger senior just received international awards for his work. His invention could lower your fuel bills by 30%. He built a battery-powered device that can actually turn water into energy and lower the amount of gas you need by about 23%. Soli's invention attaches to your motor and uses both hydrogen and oxygen for energy. So far, he's only tested his invention on lawn mower engines that don't move. He plans to test it on moving engines, and then in cars. He and four friends re-designed the engine and design of a car so it gets 866 miles to the gallon! The car isn't safe for the road, but the combination of that engine, Soli's invention, and a safer frame could revolutionize the way we drive. - Source 06/01/08 - Cisco Unveils Star Wars-esque Hologram Communication Cisco has unveiled and demonstrated their new On-Stage TelePresence Holographic Video Conferencing. In layman’s terms, it means that now you can actually do that thing they do in Star Wars when they talk to a Princess Leia hologram, and I have to say, it looks quite convincing… The video is pretty boring except for the fact that it’s a guy on stage talking to two holograms of people who are in other countries. In fact, they look so realistic that it took me a while to figure out that they were holograms. I kept advancing the video to look for the hologram part. So I think that’s proof-positive that this is fully legit. - Source 06/01/08 - Blacklight Power claims nearly-free energy from water - is this for real? Blacklight Power, a company founded by a Harvard medical doctor called Randell Mills, says it can push hydrogen atoms into a state that most scientists deny exists. The company claims that energy this atomic push releases can create electricity for a single cent per kilowatt hour, less than any known process, including burning cheap, dirty coal. The company says it can do so with a non-polluting, self-perpetuating process that mostly feeds itself with common water. Blacklight claims $60 million in funding, including about $10 million from electric utilities Conectiv and PacifiCorp, as well as amounts from unnamed hedge funds and members of its all-star board of directors, including Shelby Brewer, a Reagan-era US assistant secretary of nuclear energy, and Michael Jordan, CEO of Electronic Data Systems. Some history: Blacklight’s process was discovered in 1991 by Mills, who claimed that he’d found a way to produce a molecule called a hydrino, which is a theoretical form of the hydrogen atom in which the electron has entered a lower orbit - meaning the atom itself contains less energy. Mills decided that he could not only produce hydrinos, but also capture the energy released during the transition from hydrogen, using it to generate electricity. Unfortunately, the resting state of hydrogen is the lowest energy state ever demonstrated, and quantum physics doesn’t accept that hydrogen could be pushed to a lower state; therefore, most quantum physicists declare the Blacklight process is nonsense. Most members of the scientific establishment aren’t even willing to look. For fifteen years, the scientific controversy cropped up occasionally, until 2006, when VentureWire ran a lengthy story on Blacklight raising $50 million from private investors. Afterward, the company fell more or less silent, with the exception of scientific papers released by Mills and others, and an updated version of his book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics. Earlier this week, the company suddenly broke its silence - this time with an announcement that it had not only mastered the hydrino, but had built a prototype reactor capable of generating 50 kilowatts of energy, for the outrageously low cost of one cent per kilowatt-hour. Coal, at its very cheapest, is more expensive than that; and, for comparison, the most efficient forms of solar generation are struggling to reach 10 cents per kWh. - Source 06/01/08 - Manufacturers say environmental bill would bankrupt U.S. Measure would require companies to cut emissions and shift to renewable energy sources by 2012. Proponents say the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act could reduce global warming by requiring power companies, manufacturers and other big polluters to dramatically cut their emissions and shift from fossil fuels to more expensive renewable energy sources beginning in 2012. But opponents, led by big business groups, say the costs associated with the plan could send the already fragile economy into free-fall. "We're bankrupting our economy for very little gain" if the legislation passes, said Keith McCoy, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which strongly opposes the proposed legislation. McCoy's group predicts the country's economic output could fall by nearly $670 billion - or about 1 percent - by 2030 as power plants, refineries, manufacturers and other businesses are forced to deal with new requirements and use cleaner but more expensive renewable energy sources like solar or wind. Gas prices could hit $8 a gallon and home electricity bills could rise by 150 percent, the group predicts. As many as 4 million jobs could disappear by 2030, it claims. - Source 06/01/08 - Spiteri Water Pump, a fuel-free, electricity-generating machine The Spiteri Water Pump, a fuel-free, electricity-generating machine, walked away with the national prize during an awards ceremony held at the European Parliament in Brussels. Developed by Joe Spiteri Sargent, the machine operates under a water surface and harnesses latent hydrostatic energy naturally present in a body of water, transferring it to produce an artificial waterfall to produce electricity via a hydro-electric power system. According to Mr Spiteri Sargent, the main benefits of this innovative product are that it has very low running costs and operates without the use of consumables. Furthermore, it can be placed in any water body in the world and produces energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are no emissions from this energy transfer process. - Source 06/01/08 - Do More with Your Webcam with Free Tools The webcam that came packaged with your computer system can do a whole lot more than just let you video chat. With the right tools, you can turn your webcam into a watchful surveillance tool, a face recognition-enabled computer login utility, a time-lapse movie-maker, and more. Let's take a look at some ways you can get more out of your underutilized webcam. - Source 06/01/08 - Journals Find Fakery in Images Supporting Research As computer programs make images easier than ever to manipulate, editors at a growing number of scientific publications are turning into image detectives, examining figures to test their authenticity. And the level of tampering they find is alarming. "The magnitude of the fraud is phenomenal," says Hany Farid, a computer-science professor at Dartmouth College who has been working with journal editors to help them detect image manipulation. Doctored images are troubling because they can mislead scientists and even derail a search for the causes and cures of disease. Ten to 20 of the articles accepted by The Journal of Clinical Investigation each year show some evidence of tampering, and about five to 10 of those papers warrant a thorough investigation, says Ms. Neill. (The journal publishes about 300 to 350 articles per year.) Mr. Farid, of Dartmouth, has developed software tools that can automatically check for image tampering. The software looks for patterns in the digital code underlying an image. When files are opened and altered in Photoshop, for instance, codes are added that Mr. Farid's software can detect. Likewise, when scientists copy and paste parts of images in any software programs, their actions leave a digital mark. "No matter how good you are at it, there's always going to be some trace left behind," he says. - Source 06/01/08 - The Costanza Energy Policy: 25 Ways to Drive Oil to $150 On last night's Kudlow & Co., I discussed how absurd US energy policy is. The United States is heavily dependent on fossil fuels (>80%), most of which come from places we would rather not send our money to. We consume 26% of the world's energy, with only 3% of the world’s known oil reserves. It turns out that for the past 3 decades, we've had a George Costanza Energy policy -- every decision we have made as a country has worked to drive energy prices higher. Had we made the opposite decisions, Crude Oil prices would be much lower than they are today ($130.17 as I type this). What follows is a list of energy-related policies of the United States. On many of these, I have no opinion -- but I wanted to list as many as I could to demonstrate why Oil is where it is. - Source 06/01/08 - China's Cyber-Militia Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts. - Source 06/01/08 - Inventors urged to devise weapons Inventors are being asked to come up with new military weapons, but their ideas first have to get past a Ministry of Defence (MoD) panel. In a similar format to the hit BBC TV show Dragons' Den, academics will pitch ideas at the Centre for Defence Enterprise in Harwell, Oxfordshire. But Dr Helen Almey, from the centre, said inventors would not face the type of grilling handed out on Dragons' Den as they would not be seeking investment in their own companies. "We are looking across the board - anything for the army, navy and RAF will be considered." The MoD said it had a £2m budget to fund early developments of any ideas, but if any projects needed to be taken further the science program budget worth £500m could be used. Dr Almey denied the MoD had itself run out of fresh ideas. - Source 06/01/08 - E-Fuel Thomas Quinn, who patented Nintendo's Wii motion sensor technology, has a new invention that should allow drivers to fill up their cars at home instead of at the petrol station - and at much lower cost. In partnership with backyard fuel expert Floyd Butterfield, Quinn has launched a new company to sell the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler - a home ethanol plant that's about the size of a laundrette clothes dryer - designed to top up your tank before you leave the house for about 50p per gallon. The MicroFueler is both a pump station and an ethanol distiller reduced to an appliance-sized unit. The pump operation has the same user-friendly LCD interface found at most gas stations. This remarkable product uses micro sensors and state-of-the-art membrane technology, which keeps the unit size small and combustion free. And to further simplify the distillation process for consumers, the MicroFueler uses sugar instead of starches, which cuts the distillation period considerably. To operate simply load EFuel100 feedstock (table sugar with ethanol yeast mix) into the fermentation tank and select the fermentation option on the control panel to begin the process. It will take between 10lbs to 14lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. The MicroFueler is capable of producing 5 gallons of ethanol per day once fermentation is complete. - Source 06/01/08 - More wealth, more meat. How China's rise spells trouble "This is the end of self-sufficiency for China," says James Rice, chief of China operations for Tyson Foods, the world's biggest meat producer. "This year will be the last in which China produces enough corn for itself, and the last that it is self-sufficient in protein." He predicts China will be importing $4.5bn (£2.27bn) worth of protein by 2010. "Whenever China goes from being a net exporter to a net importer of anything, it has a big impact on global prices. Just look at oil. The $40 per barrel price popped just when China started buying." Nothing symbolises change more than meat. The world's most populous nation is becoming more carnivorous. In 1980, when the population was still under one billion, the average Chinese person ate 20kg (44lbs) of meat; last year, with an extra 300 million people, it was 54kg. The country as a whole now chomps through more than 60m tonnes of meat a year, roughly equivalent to 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens. It is a worldwide trend that is taking grain away from the world's poor. The consumption of meat in developing countries is rising by more than 5% a year. To produce a kilogram of beef farmers need 8kg of feed; for pork about 6kg; for chicken 2kg. Worldwide, 700m tonnes of grain are needed to fatten animals each year. Beijing insists China is not a major contributor to global food price inflation. Many analysts agree. China boasts an impressive degree of food self-sufficiency, particularly given it must feed more than one-fifth of the world's people on less than 10% of the arable land. On average Americans eat 129% more meat than the Chinese; Europeans consume 83% more. But in China's case the fear is not of individual consumption, but of the multiples of scale and speed of 1.3 billion people growing richer at a rate of more than 10% a year. - Source 06/01/08 - Miles to Go Wouldn't it be great if you could drive a car that gets 50 miles per gallon? Well, you can. Just hop on a plane and fly to Europe, where all new cars average 43mpg, or Japan, where the average hits 50mpg. Here in the United States, we're stuck at 25mpg in our considerably larger and more powerful cars, trucks and SUVs. So why can't we do better? Here's the dirty little secret: we can. "If you want better fuel economy, it's just a question of when auto companies want to do it and when consumers decide they want to buy it," says Don Hillebrand, a former Chrysler engineer who is now director of transportation research for Argonne National Labs. "Auto companies can deliver it within a year." - Source 06/01/08 - 'Nanopaper' Made to Soak Up Oil Spills It looks like paper. It feels like paper. It's even made like paper. But this paper, made from metal nanowires, can sit in water for months and never get wet, while soaking up to 20 times its weight in oil. The new nanopaper is designed to help clean oil spills, even difficult emulsions, and other environmental toxins. The nanopaper is made from solid potassium manganese oxide nanowires instead of cellulose, the main ingredient of normal paper. Each nanowire is about 20 nanometers in diameter, and together they naturally clump together to form strands several centimeters long. After being dissolved in water, the nanometers dry rapidly to create a sheet of nanopaper. "The process of making the nanopaper is same one you would use to make [normal] paper," said Francesco Stellacci, a study co-author also at MIT. By itself, the nanopaper sucks up water just like normal paper. But by coating the nanopaper with siloxane vapor, a common polymer, the researchers turned it from a super hydrophilic material into a super hydrophobic material, repelling water while attracting oil. - Source 06/01/08 - Cannabis Hemp: A Viable Option to Oil Dependency Biofuels such as biodiesel and alcohol fuel can be made from the oils in hemp seeds and stalks, and the fermentation of the plant as a whole, respectively. The energy from hemp may be high based on acreage or weight, but can be low based on the volume of the light weight harvested hemp. It does, however, produce more energy per acre per year than corn, sugar, flax, or any other crop currently grown for ethanol or biodiesel. Henry Ford grew industrial hemp on his estate after 1937, possibly to prove the cheapness of methanol production at Iron Mountain. He made plastic cars with wheat straw, hemp and sisal. (Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1941, "Pinch Hitters for Defense.") In 1892, Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine, which he intended to fuel "by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils. Hemp was outlawed early in the 20th century, as a by-product of cannabis prohibition. Its said the DuPont Petroleum Company was at the forefront of the movement to outlaw cannabis, in a bid to protect its new investments in the United States newly established oil fields. The technology existed even then, which made it possible to run a motor car using the hemp plant as fuel, and Olivier DuPont knew hemp would become a viable alternative to petrol (gasoline). So the die was cast and along with a number of other prominent industrialists of the time, representing the timber industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the Press as well as the petroleum industry and the US Treasury, they threw their collective weight (and financial clout) into outlawing hemp and cannabis together. - Source Future News/Links