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01/31/06 - Wyoming cloud seeding verification experiment begins A five-year, $8.8 million pilot project to examine whether seeding clouds with silver iodide produces a measurable increase in snowfall over Wyoming's Medicine Bow, Sierra Madre, and Wind River mountain ranges starts this month with intensive observations of Wyoming snow clouds. Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) designed the experiment to evaluate a technique that has been mired in controversy for decades. Microwave radiometers are capturing variations in snow-producing clouds over the target areas, including amounts and duration of water vapor and liquid water in the clouds. Instruments at selected sites are tracking precipitation rates, common meteorological variables, background air quality, and ecosystem characteristics. NCAR's partners in the observations include the University of Wyoming, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, the Desert Research Institute, and the U.S. Forest Service. Weather Modification, Inc., a private company based in Fargo, North Dakota, has been contracted to seed the target area's snow clouds. WMI is also providing a research aircraft and several ground-based instruments for this year's observations. Cloud seeding is big business. Western states spend millions each year seeding clouds with silver iodide to increase snow or rain, but studies to evaluate the method's effectiveness, at least on a large scale, have been inconclusive. The Wyoming Water Development Commission (WWDC) has funded the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program to resolve whether cloud-seeding might provide Wyoming users with a low-cost source of fresh water. Even a modest 10% increase in snowpack in the project's targeted areas would provide between 130,000 and 260,000 acre-feet of water in additional runoff each spring, according to a WWDC report. Conservative estimates value the extra water between $2.4 and $4.9 million. These numbers do not include values for generating more hydroelectric power, enhancing recreation and tourism, improving water quality, and other environmental benefits. At $6.60 to $13.00 per acre-foot, the technique would be a bargain; water from Wyoming's new High Savery Dam runs $158.93 per acre-foot, according to the WWDC. "People are sometimes concerned about changing what they think is natural weather," says NCAR project scientist Dan Breed, "but studies have shown that in some areas we're already affecting clouds unintentionally through increases in airborne particulates and other pollution. If cloud seeding is shown to work," he adds, "it may help counteract the effects of air pollution as well as ease those of natural drought cycles." "The challenge is to determine whether snowfall levels would have occurred anyway, or clearly resulted from the seeding," says NCAR scientist Roelof Bruintjes. Even a 10% increase would fall within the range of natural variability of a single storm or a whole season, he adds. "To attribute cause, we need this kind of careful, objective analysis independent of the operations." 01/31/06 - Ethanol more efficient than we think Ethanol fuel is more energy-efficient than some experts had realised and it is time to start developing it as an alternative to fossil fuels, researchers say. Farrell says it is possible to put ethanol in a car and run it, but making ethanol using current technology is expensive and contributes to pollution and greenhouse gases. "[The environmental cost] comes entirely from making fertiliser, running the tractors over the farm and operating the biorefinery," Farrell says. Better methods now being investigated would use the woody parts of plants, using what is known as cellulosic technology to break down the tough fibres. "Ethanol can be, if it's made the right way with cellulosic technology, a really good fuel," says Farrell, an assistant professor of energy and resources. "At the moment, cellulosic technology is just too expensive. If that changes, and the technology is developing rapidly, then we might see cellulosic technology enter the commercial market within five years." A new facility would make a range of fuels, foods, chemicals, animal feeds, materials, heat and power. It would use biomass, a collection of renewable plant matter and biological material such as trees, grasses and agricultural crops. "We're looking at a future for biomass where we use the entire plant and produce a range of different materials from it," says Dr Charlotte Williams of Imperial's chemistry department. "Before we freeze in the dark, we must prepare to make the transition from nonrenewable carbon resources to renewable bioresources," her team writes. An oil industry expert says it is possible. "Credible studies show that with plausible technology developments, biofuels could supply some 30% of global demand in an environmentally responsible manner without affecting food production," says Professor Steven Koonin, chief scientist for BP in London, writes in a commentary. "To realise that goal, so-called advanced biofuels must be developed from dedicated energy crops, separately and distinctly from food." 01/31/06 - Clean water from Diesel Exhaust Converting Tailpipes into Water Fountains. Modified military Humvees, now in testing, turn diesel exhaust into fresh drinking water for soldiers. If the U.S. Army's LATEST field tests pan out, its future transport vehicle will be almost as self-sustaining as a space station, enabling soldiers to survive for at least three days without supply-line support. One crucial tactical advantage over an entrenched enemy would be to make drinking water out of engine exhaust. Connecticut-based Hamilton Sundstrand, manufacturer of NASA life-support systems, along with Kentucky-based company LexCarb, has just outfitted two Humvees with 500 pounds of specialized machinery that not only recovers the water vapor naturally produced as a combustion waste product, but also makes it as clean as the water you draw from your tap. At the core is a heavy-duty carbon filter bed, engineered by LexCarb, that filters toxins from the exhaust stream and delivers condensed water vapor to a five-gallon water tank at the truck's rear. 01/31/06 - Vets & Acupuncuture The ancient Chinese art of inserting fine needles into the skin at specific points to cure ailments or ease pain by stimulating "qi" (pronounced 'chee'), or vital energy, has been used on humans for 2,000 years. Now vets are catching on and using acupuncture to handle an array of ailments, from paralysis to skin disease, tumors to arthritis -- call it a new trick to treat old dogs. And it doesn't stop with acupuncture, either. At the Tin Hau Pet Hospital, veterinarian Grace Li treats her 14-year-old cocker spaniel, Lui Lui, with acupuncture for a skin disease described in traditional Chinese medicine parlance as an excess of "damp heat." In China, old charts showing acupuncture points on horses and camels is considered proof that the art was used on animals in ancient times, but not dogs or cats. A small handful of veterinarian acupuncturists are introducing it to Hong Kong, where people widely use Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, and there are literally thousands of clinics. "They take herbs and they are having acupuncture all along, but they can never connect the two things together, acupuncture and pets," Li said. Acupuncture for pets, like acupuncture for people, has its detractors who, at the extreme, consider it quackery despite studies that show it can be effective. Practitioners and pet owners who've tried it know better. Chan recalls her best success story to date, an 11-year-old Pekinese called Luen Mo, or "Curly Hair." In March, Luen Mo's owner brought him in for acupuncture as a last resort when Western vet medicine couldn't help after he became completely paralyzed after falling off a couch. For weeks, Chan stuck needles into the small pooch, and Luen Mo made gradual progress. First, he could move a bit. Then, he could scratch his ears. Finally, on June 25, the dog walked into the clinic for the first time. "It's amazing what needles can do," she said. "Seeing is believing." 01/31/06 - Cymatics demonstrated in Nano Research New experiments using 2-dimensional blupeprints, have produced material assemblies into Novel 3-dimensional nanostructures. An international team of scientists affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center has coaxed a self-assembling material into forming never-before-seen, three-dimensional nanoscale structures, with potential applications ranging from catalysis and chemical separation to semiconductor manufacturing. The result, published in the Jan. 27 issue of Physical Review Letters, demonstrates a promising strategy for building complex, 3-D nanostructures by using standard tools of the semiconductor industry, says Nealey. Those tools, particularly lithography, already allow the making of devices with dimensions substantially smaller than 100 nanometers, or a hundred-thousandth of a centimeter. But photolithography is also limited, he says, because as practiced today it is essentially a two-dimensional process. "What we've done by using self-assembling block copolymers is to extend photolithography to three dimensions," says Nealey. "And the structures we've fabricated are completely different from the same block copolymer materials in the bulk." Also important to manufacturing, the new 3-D nanostructures are stable, well defined and nearly defect-free over large areas. They also align perfectly with the underlying lithographic pattern-a key requirement for any device or application based on them. The specific structures the team produced were composed of two tightly interwoven, yet completely independent, networks of channels and passages-all at the scale of atoms. "What we have are two interpenetrating meshes, both of which are completely continuous. And yet you could travel through one from end to end without ever entering the other," says de Pablo. A gas, for example, might be introduced through the openings to react with a catalyst deposited on the walls of the network. Nanoscale materials have massive surface areas compared to their volumes; thus, catalysis would be extremely efficient. Another use would be chemical separation of substances of different sizes. "This process gives us exquisite control over the dimensions of pores," says de Pablo. "So, we could easily make membranes that are permeable to substances smaller than the length scale of the material." The researchers study specific block copolymers consisting of long chains of two different types of molecules, which alternate with each other in blocks. At high temperature, block copolymers are molten and randomly mixed. But when cooled down, the material spontaneously assembles into alternating layers of molecules. 01/31/06 - Excess Focus on Hydrogen reduces funding for Other Near Term Energy Research Experts say too much funding is going into hydrogen at the expense of near-term technologies. Moniz says there "is a huge amount" of money going into research on new technologies, especially for transportation, that use hydrogen for fuel. Yet such hydrogen technology "is a very long way into the future, if ever, whereas lots of other kinds of work that could have very profound impacts in the shorter term are not being funded." In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush proposed $1.2 billion for hydrogen research. According to Moniz, shorter-term technologies that deserve more funding include advanced internal combustion engines and new techniques for burning fossil fuels more cleanly in power plants. Advanced engines could improve fuel efficiency by 15-20%, he says, significantly easing the demand for oil, while simultaneously decreasing emissions. One promising candidate is homogeneous charge compression ignition, known as HCCI, a technology that uses sophisticated controls to combine the best elements of diesel and gasoline engines. Since the advanced controls make the engines tunable for running on different fuels, they could further decrease dependence on oil by burning ethanol, biodiesel, or even hydrogen. Green traces the funding woes back to the late 1990s, when oil prices were very low. "Almost all energy research got killed, because nothing you could do research on could possibly beat oil at $20 a barrel. The whole infrastructure of energy research was really cut dramatically." Now oil prices have more than tripled of course. And yet this hasn't translated into more actual dollars for energy research. "I've seen more interest," says Green, "but I haven't seen that big of change in what's actually getting funded." 01/31/06 - Artificial Intelligence engine controllers for leaner, greener vehicles An advanced controller is showing “promising results” by learning on-the-fly how to operate an engine cleaner and more efficiently, say researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The researchers believe the sophisticated controller shows the most promise with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), a technique used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Spark-ignition engines need both fuel and air to operate, Drallmeier says. “If, however, I can operate the engine in a situation where I can give it less fuel for the same amount of air or dilute the mixture with inert gases such as EGR, the engine will behave differently,” Drallmeier explains. “And that’s what we’re doing here.” The researchers created a neural network controller that is implemented as a software program. Artificial neural networks are adaptive systems, which “learn” based on the successful connections they make between neurons or nodes. “The neural network observer part of the controller will assess the total air and fuel in a given cylinder in a given time,” Sarangapani says. “It then sends that estimate to another neural network, which generates the fuel commands and tells the engine how much fuel to change each cycle.” Speed is a critical component, Drallmeier says. “This controller observes what an engine cycle is doing, makes measurements in that period of time, reduces that data, and decides how you need to push the engine in the next cycle,” Drallmeier explains. “It does all that before the next cycle starts. We’re talking about a matter of milliseconds.” 01/31/06 - More Bad News About Global Warming A UK govt report says that greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts that previously thought. Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. From BBC: The European Union has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two Celsius. That, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees being enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.... A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause: * Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world * Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia * Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification * Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage * 97% loss of coral reefs * Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus * Spread of malaria in Africa and north America." 01/31/06 - Faster space engine stingy on fuel A new ion engine that promises to propel spacecraft faster and further is four times more fuel efficient than the best available, scientists say. They say the results of recent tests suggest the engine, the Dual Stage Four Grid Thruster (DS4G), would reduce the time for craft to reach Mars or Pluto and beyond. "The underlying technology has been around for 40 years," he says. "All we did with the DS4G is to add some extra components which basically gave it a 10-fold improvement." A standard ion engine works by using electrodes to extract ions from plasma, in this case heated xenon gas. The ions are focused into beams that accelerate through tiny holes in the electrodes and thrust metres out into space, propelling the spacecraft in the opposite direction. The standard engine has only three electrodes, capable of generating up to 5000 volts between them. Anything greater than this would cause the ion beams to miss the holes in the electrodes and hit the metal, destroying the electrodes and causing less efficient thrusting. Sutherland found a way to add another electrode to the system and boost voltage up to 30,000 volts without the ion beams hitting the electrodes. He says, given enough power, it would be possible to generate 70,000 volts over the electrodes. He says the bigger the voltage, the faster the ions in the beam accelerate, and the more efficient the propulsion. ESA reports tests on DS4G produced an ion exhaust plume that travelled at 210,000 metres per second. By contrast, he says, conventional chemical thrusters, which rely on ballistics to get the spacecraft on the right path, give the spacecraft "one big kick" and then rely on it to coast along in space until it slows down. Sutherland says the ion engine needs megawatts of power to generate the necessary voltage across the electrodes and to generate the ion-providing plasma. "This particular thruster has high performance but the cost of that high performance is it requires more power to run," he says. "People are talking about CTRs - controlled thermonuclear reactors - small plutonium chunks like, for example, the power system that just went up on the NASA mission to Pluto." 01/31/06 - 'Chronic' Deja Vu Dr Chris Moulin first encountered chronic déjà vu sufferers at a memory clinic. "We had a peculiar referral from a man who said there was no point visiting the clinic because he'd already been there, although this would have been impossible." The patient not only genuinely believed he had met Dr Moulin before, he gave specific details about the times and places of these 'remembered' meetings. Déjà vu has developed to such an extent that he had stopped watching TV - even the news - because it seemed to be a repeat, and even believed he could hear the same bird singing the same song in the same tree every time he went out. Chronic déjà vu sufferers are not only overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity for new experiences, they can provide plausible and complex justifications to support this. "When this particular patient's wife asked what was going to happen next on a TV programme he'd claimed to have already seen, he said 'how should I know? I have a memory problem!'" Dr Moulin said... "The exciting thing about these people is that they can 'recall' specific details about an event or meeting that never actually occurred. It suggests that the sensations associated with remembering are separate to the contents of memory, that there are two different systems in the brain at work." Dr Moulin believes a circuit in our temporal lobe fires up when we recall the past, creating the experience of remembering but also a 'recollective experience' - the sense of the self in the past. In a person with chronic déjà vu this circuit is either overactive or permanently switched on, creating memories where none exist. When novel events are processed, they are accompanied by a strong feeling of remembering. 01/30/06 - Hydrogen Powered Buses under test ISE Corporation of Poway, California (outside San Diego), sees the bus route starting with the current diesel and gasoline-electric hybrids, progressing to hydrogen-powered hybrid internal combustion engines (ICE) and eventually to fuel cell hybrid buses. The common electric drive and hybrid technology components make for a logical transition path according to these advocates. They currently have more than 50 units in service in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The intense use that transit vehicles are put to means the company's learning curve is quite steep, but so far has reinforced the company's belief that transit buses are the best use of hydrogen technology. Scott outlines several key advantages buses have over smaller convention vehicles when it comes to hydrogen power: · They can carry the fuel needed, often up to 60 kilograms of compressed hydrogen, providing a 500-kilometer (310-mile) range · Transit schedules make for optimal utilization of hydrogen-powered vehicles and taking advantage of their efficient operation (in transit use, vehicles often put in to up to 16 hours a day of service) · Hydrogen-powered buses create hydrogen supporters (based on rider surveys conducted so far) · City center operation of buses focuses their use in areas that need the most pollution reduction. Running at 7km/kg of hydrogen, the vehicles use turbocharged, intercooled Ford V-10 engines adapted to run on hydrogen and hybridized with a Siemens Elfa system, and add such features as regenerative braking and battery or ultracapacitor energy storage. 01/30/06 - Helium 3 the key to Lunar Exploration RUSSIA is planning to beat America back to the Moon to mine for an abundance of untapped riches. But it's not gold or diamonds they aim to bring back to Earth. It's rare and precious helium 3 (chemical symbol He3) which could provide our planet with an almost limitless source of clean energy. No Russian has ever walked on the lunar surface and the last Americans went there in Apollo 17 in 1972. Now leaders in Moscow hope to beat America's 2018 target to return, set in 2004 by President Bush, by three years. They aim to set up a permanent base and scoop up helium 3 which will transform our power supplies. There are few deposits on Earth, but it is abundant on the Moon, with estimates in millions of tons. And just 25 tons could power a country like America for a year. Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of Russia's giant Energia Space Corporation, said: "We are planning to build a permanent base on the Moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery of helium 3." Helium 3 is deposited on the Moon's powdery soil by a wind of charged particles from the sun. The scientists also estimate that the greatest amounts of helium 3 will be found on the far side of the Moon. Helium 3 is a stable and lighter version of regular helium gas. In one paper, Kulcinski estimated a total of 1,100,000 metric tons of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind on the Moon. Since the surface has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, He3 could be found down to depths of several meters. The older soils should be better sources of helium 3 because they have been exposed to the solar wind longer and contain greater amounts of fine-grained aggregates that absorb it. Also, solar wind-implanted particles are more abundant on the far side, because the Earth shields the Moon's near side from the solar wind for part of each solar orbit. Scientists estimate that the great-est amounts of helium 3 will be found on the far side "seas," of the Moon, due to the higher solar wind. Their guess is based on analysis of rock samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts and mineralogic maps produced by the Clementine spacecraft. They expect to refine their maps with new elemental data produced by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. To extract helium 3 from the lunar soil, the Russians would need to heat the dust to about 600C. However, to extract one ton of helium 3, it's estimated 200million tons of the Moon would have to be processed. And that's equivalent to mining the top two metres of a region 10 square kilometres in area. 01/30/06 - Earth magnetic field about to flip 180 degrees Like the plot of a sci-fi B movie, something weird is happening deep underground where the constant spin of Earth's liquid metallic core generates an invisible magnetic force field that shields our planet from harmful radiation in space. Gradually, the field is growing weaker. Could we be heading for a demagnetized doomsday that will leave us defenseless against the lethal effects of solar wind and cosmic rays? At the present rate, Earth's magnetic field could be gone within a few centuries, exposing the planet to the relentless blast of charged particles from space with unpredictable consequences for the atmosphere and life. Other possibilities: the field could stop weakening and begin to strengthen, or it could weaken to the point that it suddenly flips polarity-that is, compasses begin to point to the South Magnetic Pole. Some researchers believe we are already in the transition phase, with growing areas of magnetic anomaly-where field lines are moving the wrong way-signaling an ever weaker and chaotic state for our protective shield. 01/30/06 - A humidifier saves energy If indoor air is too dry or too humid, unhealthy microbes, mold and dust mites might thrive in your home. Using a humidifier can reduce your utility bills. By reducing the evaporation from your skin, properly humidified air can make you feel comfortable at a lower air temperature. Even though the humidifier uses some electricity and does cool the air slightly, you save by being able to set the thermostat lower. Before you invest in a humidifier, try making your home more airtight to reduce the cold, dry outdoor air leaking in. Normal activities like cooking, washing, bathing and breathing produce moisture. So reducing leakage of outside air into the house will make the humidity level rise. With one or two freestanding units, you can control when they run and at what humidity output. Evaporative humidifiers are very effective and easy to use. These use a large vertical piece of wick material with the lower end submerged in a water reservoir. A small fan draws room air in through the upper portion of the damp wick. As the air passes through the wick, it picks up moisture. Select one that has at least two fan speeds and a large reservoir so you do not have to fill it often. 01/30/06 - Mobile Air Rotors (MARS) Use Wind to Generate Electricity This tethered device generates electrical energy as it rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind. As a closed structure, the lighter-than-air Magenn Power Air Rotor System (MARS) lets the company produce wind rotors that are operable between 1 meter/sec and in excess of 28 meters/sec. The electrical energy is transferred down the tether to a transformer at a ground station and then transferred to the electricity power grid. Helium sustains the Air Rotor, which ascends to an altitude for best winds; and its rotation causes the Magnus effect, providing additional lift, stabilization, and causing it to pull up overhead rather than drift downwind on its tether. Small MARS units could be deployed in disaster areas for emergency electrical power for medical and other disaster relief situations. They can correspond to changing wind patterns, offer up to 50 percent efficiency, and make use of higher winds from 400-ft to 1,000-ft above ground level. 01/30/06 - Mexia is potential location for research-based coal plant Central Texas leaders are angling for a power plant with the power to change the way the world thinks about coal. State officials this week will explore Mexia as a potential location for the federally funded FutureGen plant, which would aim to turn coal to electricity without pollution. The billion-dollar plant would produce electricity for 275,000 houses, as well as hydrogen for industry and fuel cells. But its main purpose would be research and development for clean coal technology, including more efficient combustion and underground trapping of carbon emissions. Limestone County Judge Elenor Holmes said the project, which could employ more than 200 people including research scientists, would be her county's biggest economic development news in years. Instead of burning powdered coal in the traditional way, it would convert the coal into gas first through an existing technology called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. The process extracts more energy out of coal and greatly reduces key pollutants, but cost and reliability concerns have limited its use in the United States. McDonald said existing technology could reduce emissions to almost zero, with the exception of carbon dioxide, which is currently unregulated but is targeted in international global warming treaties. The project would dispose of a million tons a year of carbon dioxide by injecting it more than a mile down into aquifers or salt domes, where it would remain permanently compressed, like natural gas. 01/30/06 - Airborne Wind Power Wind turbines are constantly getting taller because everyone knows the higher you get off the ground, the better the wind speeds. But building big towers is expensive, especially if you want one 15,000 feet tall. So why not ditch the tower and make the windmill fly? It seems obvious that once someone creates a workable system, it will become a huge winner, because of the sheer amount of power available up high: 1% of the jetstream's wind power could supply all US electrical demand. Also, one of the main complaints about wind power is its intermittency--the wind doesn't blow all the time, and so (according to Sky Windpower), most wind farms are only operating at their peak capacity 19-35% of the time. The wind is much steadier at altitude, so you get even more advantage over ground-based wind power. A final advantage is ad-hoc generation: devices with a reasonably simple tether-system do not have to be permanently installed in one place, they could be trucked out to any location that needed them. One flying windmill rated at 240kW with rotor diameters of 35 feet could generate power for less than two cents per kilowatt hour--that would make them the cheapest power source in the world. And they would have far better uptime than most windmills--since the jetstream never quits, they should operate at peak capacity 70-90% of the time. Output would also be less dependent on location than it is on the ground, simply because terrain doesn't matter much when you're at 35,000ft; however, since the jetstream and other "geostrophic" winds don't blow much at latitudes near the equator, it would be useful primarily for middle- and higher-latitudes. 01/30/06 - Renewable Power Provided for Remote Indian Villages The Micro Hydro Power project at Chizami, developed and owned by Chizami and Sumi Village Councils, has a capacity of 200 kW, to take care of electricity shortage in the two villages through their own electricity and mark the empowerment of villages that have shown the capability to implementing the Project. The assured power supply is expected to lead to activities that enhance self-employment and small-scale industrial opportunities in and around these two villages. The Biomass Gasifier Project at Pfutseromi village in the Phek districts has a generating capacity of 100 kW and would use locally available biomass to generate enough electricity to meet the needs of the village with assured supply of their own electricity. This would provide employment for operating the plant and create opportunities for the youth and citizens of the village. The Ministry of Non Conventional Energy Sources is providing guidance, support and financial assistance to similar initiatives across the country and is focusing on biomass, small hydro, solar and wind, as they are suitable and sustainable to the local conditions. 01/30/06 - Israeli startup turns organic waste into energy Biomass - organic waste - is generated as a by-product of many types of industry worldwide, such as forestry, and crop and livestock farming. The biomass is generally transported at great cost to a landfill to rot, or it is burned; both rotting and burning create methane, a greenhouse gas which plays a major role in global warming. However, if harnessed properly, methane can be a very valuable source of energy. Olive waste is heated and dried and then it is introduced into the reactor. Here it undergoes two processes, pyrolysis and gasification, which involve the biomass being heated to 800 degrees centigrade, at which temperature its molecules break down. A combination of high-calorie gases including methane and carbon monoxide are produced which, because they are lighter than air, flow upwards through a pipe into a standard gas turbine to generate electricity in the usual way. The other by-product is coke, which can be turned into the active type of coke that can be sold for use to power air conditioners or as filters for various substances. Genova's technology employs a novel technique, which the company prefers not to disclose, for maintaining the high temperatures needed for the process. This technique means that "only ten percent of the electricity we produce is used to power the [olive waste conversion] process," Granot told ISRAEL21c. "The process is 90% efficient. Our competitors are only 50% efficient, at best." Thus, where the cost of a kilowatt/hour is 9 cents for the company's competitors, Genova's cost is only 2 cents per kw/h. "We tested it with wine waste from the Carmel Mizrachi vineyard, and we proved it works with wine," says Granot. "For the US, we have proved that we can do it for any kind of biomass - wine, corn, sunflowers." 01/30/06 - Steam powered RC toys (more here) 01/30/06 - UN to release 7 Trillion to help resolve world problems The most potent threats to life on earth - global warming, health pandemics, poverty and armed conflict - could be ended by moves that would unlock $7 trillion - $7,000,000,000,000 (£3.9trn) - of previously untapped wealth, the United Nations claims today. The price? An admission that the nation-state is an old-fashioned concept that has no role to play in a modern globalised world where financial markets have to be harnessed rather than simply condemned. If its recommendations are accepted - and the authors acknowledge this could take years or even decades - it could finally force countries to face up to the fact that their public finance and growth figures conceal the vast damage their economies do to the environment. At the heart of the proposal, unveiled at a gathering of world business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, is a push to get countries to account for the cost of failed policies, and use the money saved "up front" to avert crises before they hit. 01/30/06 - Solar Panel Light concentrator Stellaris Corporation, an early-stage sustainable energy company, has developed Concentrating Photovoltaic Glazing (CPG), a new type of solar module technology that consists of small (6mm high) lenses that concentrate light onto narrow strips of thin film photovoltaic (PV) material. This concentration reduces the amount of PV material required in manufacturing the module by 67 percent. The company suggests that it will cost much less to manufacture and will generate roughly the same amount of electricity as existing comparable-sized modules. 01/29/06 - Claim of Home Power System Here are a couple of generator systems for a house power supply. They run on straight nitrogen-hydroxide generated from water. (Air is 78% nitrogen. - JWD) The same system on the v8 car. The generator has been running as the main supply of electricity to a house for over ten years to the best of my knowledge. Well there are no power lines where this unit is. I myself drive an old f100 Canadian engine. It's a 360 cubic inch six cylinder. I have run it on the fuel system for over four years, so far with no known ill effect except on my fuel bill round town I get about 140 miles per gallon. On a good run a lot more, but I stopped checking the mileage years ago. Because I know I cannot produce them without getting unwelcome visitors. But there are lots of them privately built in Australia; they are quite common. Even the guy that does my road-worthy certificate has one [we have to have are cars checked every year here for any mechanical faults before we can reregister the vehicle]. They are not legal but the guy doing the check has one on his car as well. So registration not really an issue. 01/29/06 - A 235 V8 engine with nitrogen hydroxide cell The system is fairly basic: It uses 316 grade stainless steel - a 100mm pipe anode and 80mm pipe for the cathode, placed inside the other. The end caps are made from perspex and sealed with rubber o-rings. The centre pipe is negatively charged, the outer positive. The setup uses the existing carby, and in this case it has been substituted with one from a briggs and stratton lawn mower. This injects a small amount of fuel to help maintain a seal on the piston rings, and prevent corrosion. It seems that having a vacuum within the gas chamber is what makes these devices so successful. Not only does it speed up the breakdown of water, it is said that with the combination of the vacuum + hydrogen + oxygen + atmospheric nitrogen, nitrogen hydroxide is created within the cell. I dont know much about chemistry, so I dont know what else to say about this. 01/29/06 - Using an Icehouse for summer cooling Since the early 1800’s the icehouse has been one of the self-sufficient, non-electric homestead’s most valuable buildings. The structure has taken many shapes and forms over the years but all have been calculated to do the same thing: exclude heat and outside air while draining water from the slowly melting ice. Icehouses are easy to build in a permafrost area: “just” dig a few feet into the continuously frozen ground. In the temperate zone where most of us live, however, it’s a somewhat different story. . . although there’s nothing complicated about the theory or construction of such a building. Some old-timers advise cutting ice off a lake or pond when the surface has frozen only about eight inches thick (because the thinner chunks are easier to handle). Others say to wait until the ice is two feet through. All seem to agree that first-frozen ice (rather than that which has been allowed to thaw and refreeze a number of times) is best . . . and the larger the cake, the slower it melts. Put down one layer of ice at a time, pack each block in sawdust and make sure it doesn’t touch its neighbors. Hold the outside blocks eight to twelve inches from the walls and-as each tier is finished-fill in and around it with sawdust and cover each layer of ice with four to six inches of the ground wood. Repeat until the ice-sawdust is stacked to within a foot of the ceiling (and finished off, of course, with a layer of sawdust). As you need ice, all you do is go in and get it . . . letting in as little of the warm outside air as possible and always remembering to leave what’s left covered with sawdust. The next winter, when you’re ready to refill the house, haul the old sawdust out to the compost heap or the garden and pack the new ice with fresh ground wood. 01/29/06 - Manta Ground Effect Aerofoil as possible Land Speeder (Add a propulsion unit and we have a novel new transport method. - JWD) 7 foot 8 inches long by 6 foot wide. It lifts 90 kg at 40 kph [21+ mph roughly] that's a seventy kilogram person [11 stone] (154lbs.), ask any aircraft engineer or pilot, they will tell you an airfoil cannot lift that much weight at that low a speed. The picture is from a video capture. This is something new with quite a bit of military capability and potential horse power. Bingo starwars speeder bike. By the way it works! The MANTA Ground Effect Aerofoil is a manta shaped wing designed to fly in ground effect, configured as shown in the accompanying illustrations. A 50 to 75 foot towline would attach the aerofoil to the tow craft with a quick release. The aerofoil will plane on its center float at 10 to 15 mph and become airborne at 20 to 30 mph. With a wingspan of approximately 10 feet, the aerofoil will reach a height of 1 to 3 feet above the waters surface. To use the MANTA G.E.A., a person would lie on the upper central body of the aerofoil and grasp the handrails; the rider would control the aerofoil by shifting his/her weight. Should any problem arise, the rider would only have to release the towline or let go and slide safely into the water. Design Parameters and an updated Manta site with Better Images courtesy of Automorrow on the Interact discussion list. 01/29/06 - Laws prevent effective off-grid power Solar Generated Steam can be used to run power generators as one method of making your own power. At some installations, the hot exhaust from micro-turbine engines can be used to produce saturated steam. This steam can also be superheated and expanded in small steam engines that drive electrical generation equipment. Heat in the exhaust steam may be used to heat buildings during cool weather. The overall energy efficiency of modern small-scale power systems could exceed 50%. Modern computer technology allows these systems to be automated and groups of these smal, co-generative power stations can be monitored and controlled from a single remote location via the internet. But don't even think about sharing your excess power with your neighbor. Power regulators in many jurisdictions forbid private power lines from being connected across property lines. This prohibition has discouraged investment in Distributed Generation (DG) systems that are more efficient, less expensive than supplies from the grid. New technological advances have been developed in the field of small scale, on-site distributed power generation(DG). The cost of small-scale power generation technology has been steadily dropping, while the efficiency of energy conversion has steadily been rising. Advances have occurred in such areas as solar thermal energy conversion, solar photovoltaics, wind energy, fuel cell technology, thermo-acoustic engine technology, Stirling engine technology and various types of small engines. New types of small gas turbine engines of under 100-Kw output that can operate on a wide variety of fuels have appeared. Some of these new turbine engines use turbine blades made from high-temperature ceramics such as silicon-nitride and silicon carbide that allow these engines to operate at higher combustion temperatures and at higher thermal efficiency. On-site power generation is appearing in privately owned off-grid homes as well as at commercial and industrial locations. As far back as the mid-1990’s, a few commercial power users have installed natural gas powered truck engines (up to 300-Kw) on their premises to generate power and supply heat during winter (co-generation). 01/29/06 - Experiments to define ZPE coupling Quantum theory states that in the void is definitely a ‘something’. It is a seething mass of ‘virtual’ particles that fleetingly appear into and then disappear from our observable universe. This activity, known as quantum fluctuations, corresponds to an intrinsic energy of the void, the ‘zero-point energy’, which, if the void were a continuum, would be infinite. It is generally believed that there is a smallest piece of void, which makes the zero-point energy finite but still colossal beyond the imagination. Each cubic millimetre of empty space contains more than enough zero-point energy to create a new universe. A useful analogy is to consider our observable universe as a mass of waves on top of an ocean, whose depth is immaterial. Our senses and all our instruments can only directly detect the waves so it seems that trying to probe whatever lies beneath, the void itself, is hopeless. The force has only been measured in very simple geometries such as flat parallel plates. More recent calculations show that the force is sensitive to geometry and by changing the materials and the shape of the cavity you can alter the magnitude of the Casimir force and possibly even reverse it. This would be a ground-breaking discovery as the Casimir force is a fundamental property of the void and reversing it is akin to reversing gravity. The new instrumentation to be installed soon following the srif3 investment will enable researchers to extend the measurements to yet more complex shapes and, for the first time, to search for a way to reverse the Casimir force. This new wave of measurements will enable an unprecedented level of probing of the void and will provide important information on new theories of gravity and with sufficient precision will even put limits on the true number of spatial dimensions. Knowing how zero-point energy varies with the shape of an enclosure may also give clues to the origin of so-called ‘dark energy’, discovered recently. 01/28/06 - Flying car mystery deepens! (I still think it was a wreck in progress. One guy emailed me saying it could be 3 balloons whose images were blurred to make the car shape, but I don't think that explains it better than a car in flight during an accident, it lands and throws dirt onto the highway as in the photos. - JWD) The list included: * A hoax * Two cars parked next to each other * Hole in the ground * Trailer * Bus shelter * Water tower * Tent * Car on a pole * Harry Potter on holiday. Well, we can discount a lot of those right now, because we have secured the first on-the-spot photographic evidence of the area in question, courtesy of flag-waving Aussie Mark Zed. There is a complete lack of any sort of structure viz bus shelter (there is no bus route along this road anyway), nor a gazebo nor rotunda nor information booth etc etc. No evidence of excavations beyond natural rain-water run off... given the steep escarpment (down into water) to the right, no work of any substantial degree could occur without significant re-enforcement or collapse of the escarpment also as there are no buildings to service there are no utilities running down this side of the road. Anyone who may have visited this area in the past may remember information booths dotted along the way giving summarised accounts of pre & post settlement history, note however that the last of these is in fact at least 400 meters away to the south. 01/28/06 - $7000 Chinese eco-car for city driving Innovech may sound more like a manufacturer of computer parts than automobiles, but its new MyCar design may presage a radical shift in both the European microcar market and how we think about global economic cooperation. The MyCar is a direct competitor to the Smart -- a microcar that trades power, room and speed for extraordinary mileage, low cost and ease-of-use. The MyCar will come in both a gasoline or diesel version (the fuel used is unclear -- the MyCar website refers to it as an "explosion-engine version") and an electric version, and will sell for €6,500, or about US$7,000. The low costs come from Chinese manufacture and the use of light-weight plastics in its production. This is a tiny car by any definition, measuring about 4' wide and less than 8' long. For the "explosion-engine" version, the engine options range from 50cc to 250cc, and even the most powerful model can't go faster than 85 km/hour, or around 50 mph; there are no details on fuel consumption (at least none that I could find), but given the light weight and low power engine, mileage is likely to be quite high, in the 60-90 miles per gallon range. The electric models range from 4 kilowatts to 15 kilowatts in power, but there are even fewer details available about performance and range than for the gas/diesel model. 01/28/06 - New sonofusion experiment produces results without external neutron source By bombarding a special mixture of acetone and benzene with oscillating sound waves, the researchers caused bubbles in the mixture to expand and then violently collapse. This technique, which has been dubbed "sonofusion," produces a shock wave that has the potential to fuse nuclei together, according to the team. The telltale sign that fusion has occurred is the production of neutrons. Earlier experiments were criticized because the researchers used an external neutron source to produce the bubbles, and some have suggested that the neutrons detected as evidence of fusion might have been left over from this external source. In the new setup, the researchers dissolved natural uranium in the solution, which produces bubbles through radioactive decay. "This completely obviates the need to use an external neutron source, resolving any lingering confusion associated with the possible influence of external neutrons," says Robert Block, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer and also an author of the paper. The experiment was specifically designed to address a fundamental research question, not to make a device that would be capable of producing energy, Block says. At this stage the new device uses much more energy than it releases, but it could prove to be an inexpensive and portable source of neutrons for sensing and imaging applications. To verify the presence of fusion, the researchers used three independent neutron detectors and one gamma ray detector. All four detectors produced the same results: a statistically significant increase in the amount of nuclear emissions due to sonofusion when compared to background levels. 01/28/06 - Machines Pluck Cash From Trash With Americans recycling more and more every day, many municipalities have begun using advanced, multimillion-dollar machines to sort through the deluge of soup cans, beer bottles and newspapers. These giant, next-generation trash sorters utilize everything from magnets and sifting screens to optical sensors and weight detectors to make sure that all the waste goes where it's intended. "When you give people the option and make it easier on them, you find that people will recycle on a much higher level," says Lynn Brown, Waste Management's vice president of corporate communications. "Convenience is really the key here." It's fairly easy for a machine to pick pieces of wood and cardboard out of a mountain of paper. However, only the most advanced computer-controlled sorting machines are capable of separating plastic from glass. Until recently, only the largest municipalities were willing to invest the necessary cash to get these programs up and running. "We would have a very hard time keeping up without the new machines," says Patrick Collins of the Monroe County Department of Environmental Services. "On one station we've been able to reduce the number of workers from six down to three." Indeed, it appears that the major downside to increased recycling efficiency is the loss of jobs. Intelligent trash-sorting machines and single-stream recycling may spell the end of the good old garbage man. 01/28/06 - Water Vapor builds the heat in Europe Water vapour rather than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main reason why Europe's climate is warming, according to a new study. The scientists say that rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gases are increasing humidity, which in turn amplifies the temperature rise. Researchers calculated that the temperature increase is partly down to higher concentrations of the gases such as carbon dioxide which are often described as causing the "man-made greenhouse effect"; but increased water vapour appears to have a larger effect, accounting for about 70% of the observed temperature rise. Not all regions of Europe are affected equally. Between 1995 and 2002, Eastern states appear to have warmed by a rate equivalent to about 2C per decade - considerably faster than their western counterparts. An increased concentration of water vapour is just one of the feedback mechanisms which could change or amplify the progress of human-induced global warming. 01/28/06 - Historical Data shows Sea level rise 'is accelerating' Australian researchers found that sea levels rose by 19.5cm between 1870 and 2004, with accelerated rates in the final 50 years of that period. In an attempt to reduce the scale of uncertainty in this projection, the Australian researchers have analysed tidal records dating back to 1870. The data was obtained from locations throughout the globe, although the number of tidal gauges increased and their locations changed over the 130-year period. These records show that the sea level has risen, and suggest that the rate of rise is increasing. Over the entire period from 1870 the average rate of rise was 1.44mm per year. Over the 20th Century it averaged 1.7mm per year; while the figure for the period since 1950 is 1.75mm per year. Although climate models predict that sea level rise should have accelerated, the scientists behind this study say they are the first to verify the trend using historical data. If the acceleration continues at the current rate, the scientists warn that sea levels could rise during this century by between 28 and 34cm. "It means there will be increased flooding of low-lying areas when there are storm surges," he told the Associated Press. "It means increased coastal erosion on sandy beaches; we're going to see increased flooding on island nations." Increased temperatures can lead to higher sea-levels through several mechanisms including the melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of sea water. 01/28/06 - Disposable camera hack to kill RFID transmitters With a little work, a disposable camera can be turned into a low-cost device for disabling the tracking bugs in many products and ID cards. Radio Frequency ID tags (RFIDs) are tiny bugs that can be embedded in products and ID cards, enabling them to be read at a distance. US passports and London's tube-cards are beginning to incorporate these. Nominally, they can only be read at a few centimeters' distance, but security researchers have demonstrated that they can be read by attackers at 15 or more meters away. With goods, it's hard to tell if you've got an RFID embedded in them and hard to kill them (though you can put them in the microwave and kill them). Many times, intrusions into privacy like this are excused on the basis that they offer discounts in exchange for your personal information. This is true with the Oyster card, too: a single ride on the tube costs £3 now if you use a paper ticket, but with an Oyster card the journey is as little as £1.30. The thing is, before they ramped up Oyster card use on January 1, the cost of a paper single was also as little as £1.10 -- in other words, they nearly tripled the cost of an anonymous journey and then told everyone that you got a great discount if you used the privacy-surrendering means. It generates a strong electromagnetic field with a coil, which should be placed as near to the target RFID-Tag as possible. The RFID-Tag then will receive a strong shock of energy comparable with an EMP and some part of it will blow, thus deactivating the chip forever. To keep the costs of the RFID-Zapper as low as possible, we decided to modify the electric component of a singe-use-camera with flash, as can be found almost everywhere. (via boingboing.com) 01/28/06 - Danger of food for fuel Innovative energy companies are now converting food plants into biological diesel oils and ethanol alcohol, in order to supply the world with a replacement fuel for dwindling oil reserves. If this growing trend continues, food crops will compete with petroleum products on the speculative world commodity market. Food prices will spiral upward, out of control, as energy-producing crops replace food crops. The world's food supplies are already decreasing due to low rainfall, over-pumping of fresh water rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. Irresponsible use of food crops as a source of fuel will result in some people dying of hunger, so that others can live in comfort. The moral consequence of converting food crops into fuel will become a danger when hungry people line-up along busy highways and at the front doors of multinational companies begging for food. The world consumption of oil is well over 31 billion barrels per year and this does not include the future requirements of China and India. The current volume of oil consumption can never be replaced by using biofuels, whether it is called ethanol, biodiesel or something else. We live in a time of freedom, which carries the responsibility to make ethical choices. The freedom of companies and governments to redirect food supplies to feed oil consuming machines, does not mean it is the responsibility of the people to accept this. For anyone who still feels a sense of morality; food should never be used as a fuel. 01/28/06 - Dance games to lose weight, improve health The BBC (linked in today’s Morning news roundup) and the AP are reporting that all West Virginia middle schools (and eventually all 753 public schools) will be using the popular video game “Dance Dance Revolution” to whip their students into shape. Let’s be honest - what geek hasn’t been enthralled by the idea of getting in shape while playing video games? Are there any readers out there who have turned over their primary source of exercise to their gaming systems (aside from all of you with Superman-esque thumbs)? (via lifehacker.com) 01/28/06 - Shovelglove, easy excercise I remembered reading something in some French novel about coal shovelers having the best abdominal muscles of anyone the author had ever seen. I started making shoveling motions. I went to the local hardware store, and after some experimenting, I wound up with something that worked: a sledgehammer with an old sweater wrapped around it. It had the right shape, just enough weight, and the requisite softness. And it was pleasingly simple. 14 minute duration for these excercises is a significant number. Yet it is just long enough to give some aerobic benefit. Yes, half an hour would be better. An hour would be even better. But guess what? You won't do it. You might do it for 3 weeks, or maybe even 3 months, but you'll start to resent it and you'll quit. Do it for 14 minutes and you'll do it for a lifetime. Sledgehammers do come in a number of different sizes (mine is 12 pounds, I've seen them from 8 to 20), so you can upgrade to a bigger one after a while, but I'd be very cautious about doing so. If you can't not upgrade, you're inevitably going to downgrade -- to nothing. I used my original 12 pounder for a solid year before permitting myself to move up to 16 pounder, and I still go back to it now and then. But whatever you do, keep the 14 minutes sacred. The story has a happy ending -- so far. Shovelglove actually seems to work, for me, at least. I've been doing it for over three years now and have gotten terrifically strong and lean, by ordinary non-professional-athlete standards. (via lifehacker.com) 01/27/06 - Solar Powered Carport Patagonia's new solar PV carport project will produce energy as well as provide shade for employees' cars during working hours. The 66.6 kW Sharp Solar system incorporates 360 185-watt Sharp panels on three custom-built carports erected in the parking lot. The eye-catching structure produces an amount of energy equivalent to the energy used in approximately 60 California homes during peak usage periods and also shades cars during the day, according to the project's designers. "Our new solar system proves energy independence can be aesthetically pleasing," said Jill Dumain, Patagonia. "Patagonia believes in using business to inspire solutions to the environmental crisis, and our solar solution is just one example of our commitment to that belief." Patagonia uses various forms of renewable energy, including solar electricity and wind power, for its facilities worldwide. In 1996, Patagonia incorporated a 5-kW solar system into its Reno, Nevada distribution center. Realizing that solar is the most viable form of renewable energy when it comes to supporting its corporate energy efficiency goals, Patagonia plans to expand the system at the Reno facility to produce more energy. "This system will provide twelve percent of the power for its headquarters, while the carports will provide much-appreciated sheltered parking for employees." 01/27/06 - Where our tax dollars go! Ever wonder exactly what happens to your tax dollars? This fantastic graphical chart gives a proportionally displayed breakdown of pretty much everything the US government spent money on in 2004. Not suprisingly, the department of defense gobbles up the lion's share. It's an interesting and rather illuminating picture! 01/27/06 - First London Homes Utilize Geothermal Energy The Energy Savings Trust is reporting on a new housing development in London that will utilise geothermal energy to help reduce carbon emissions. The new apartments, being built in Norbury by Bob Harris of Earthdome, will have geothermal hot water and heating and form part of the Mayor of London's renewable energy strategy. Each home will rely on the earth as a heat source, using a system of underground pipes that will transfer heat from the earth to the building and provide underfloor heating and hot water as well as reducing annual household energy bills. Steve Mills of A1 Lofts is retaining one apartment as a showcase to encourage others to adopt sustainable building practices. "Bob has the rare talent of not only being practical and positive, but able to grasp the wider implications of the building and its relationship to the natural environment. Through his teaching he is able to inspire others in the art and craft of sustainable building," said Mr Mills. 01/27/06 - Interesting Stereo Note! Test the speakers, wires, and polarity all in one step! If you are wiring a car stereo or home stereo and have the wires plugged into the speakers but at the other end do not know which wires go to which port? Rather than trace each wire seperately, grab a 9volt battery, hold one wire on a terminal, tap the other wire on the other terminal, and it will make the speaker pop. Now know which speaker is connected to that wire. Also, if wired correctly +/- the cone will pop OUT; if it sucks in, you have the polarity backwards. Too steps solved in one. You want all of the speakers to pop out with the +/-. This will make your stereo, home or car sound much fuller. If it sounds hollow or lacking bass, you may have just one speaker wired backwards. 01/27/06 - Scammer pays FedEx to send him a box of Rottweiler excrement (Just HAD TO POST THIS since we all get those idiot Nigerian scam spams. - JWD) Here's a satisfying story of revenge: a guy was selling his used video camera on Amazon, and some small-time sleazeball sent the seller a bogus sale confirmation email that appeared to originate from amazon.com. Instead of receiving a valuable video camera, the scammer ended up paying FEDEX shipping charges to Nigeria for a box of dog shit. 01/26/06 - Body Electric locking system Soon, all you will need is your index finger to press the car door which recognises your fingerprint immediately, to open the door. Technology that transmits data from the skin to electronic systems is far advanced and in some cases already a reality. Modern car keys are already small electronic marvels. Owners of the new Audi A8 have the choice of an advanced key that includes a pulse generator whose signal is registered by a proximity sensor in the door that recognised the driver within a range of 1.5 metres. If the signal is accepted, the doors are unlocked as soon as the driver operates the button on the door handle and he/she need only press the start button to start the engine. The key of the BMW 7-Series memorises driver settings such as the seat and steering wheel positions. It includes a panic alarm and other anti-theft devices. The Bavarian firm Ident Technology has now developed a system whereby the driver need only carry a signal in his/her pocket with the difference that the data is not transmitted by radio wave but through the skin as soon as it touches the door handle. Ident Technology argues that this system is superior to other data transfer systems such as Bluetooth because it does not interfere with other electronic systems and does not require expensive radio frequency licenses. Key information is transferred through body contact. The Dutch manufacturer Inalfa will this year become the first producer to use the technology for sunroofs. If a finger or hand touches the frame, the closing procedure is automatically stopped using only skin sensors. Researchers are working on applying the skin technology for numerous other functions in the car. The micro systems are becoming smaller and cheaper and are expected to be an everyday reality in the motor car seven to 10 years from now. 01/26/06 - Extracting Water from the Air Without water, humans cannot live. Since time began, we have lived by the water and vast tracts of waterless land have been abandoned as too difficult to inhabit. A new machine which extracts water from air could change that … One evening 20 years ago, James J Reidy checked on his new dehumidifier and as he poured the contents down the drain, he reflected on how pure it looked. AirWater machines will be sold in many sizes, producing from 20 litres (AUD$1300 inc GST) to 5,000 litres per day (AUD$160,000 inc), with the option to run machines greater than 50 litres a day capacity from solar power. The 5,000 litre machine with solar power costs AUD$250,000 but the only things it requires are sun and air, and they are both free, so running costs amount to maintenance and capital expenses. Obtaining water from the atmosphere is nothing new - since the beginning of time, nature’s continuous cycle of evaporation and condensation in the form of rain or snow (the Hydrologic Cycle) has been the sole source and means of regenerating wholesome water for all forms of life on earth. At any given moment, the earth’s atmosphere contains 4,000 cubic miles of water, which is just .000012% of the 344 million cubic miles of water on earth. Nature maintains this ratio via evaporation and condensation, irrespective of the activities of man. The availability of drinking water is a global problem - there is a global US$15 billion bottled water market, a US$100 billion point-of-use water treatment industry, and wherever practical, expensive desalination plants with huge infrastructures and severe geographical restrictions. All of these methods require traditional sources of water and each has inherent weaknesses and disadvantages. In spite of the above there exists a pent-up, insatiable, world-wide need for new sources of drinking water. AirWater machines could be the answer as they offer an inexhaustible source of safe sterilized drinking water. 01/26/06 - Freeze-Framer helps you train your own physiology The Freeze-Framer software and hardware package from Heartmath Institute which has created an interactive program that measures stress levels and their effect on your physiology to help better manage your emotional and physical performance and facilitate heart-brain synchronisation. HeartMath research has shown that emotions are reflected in our heart rhythm patterns. The analysis of Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or heart rhythms, is recognized as a powerful, non-invasive measure that reflects heart-brain interactions and autonomic nervous system dynamics, which are particularly sensitive to changes in the emotional state. New clinical research identifies HRV as a key indicator of preventable stress and shows correlation with a broad range of related health problems. This complete system consists of an easy-to-use finger sensor and software that displays your heart rhythms (HRV), offers games, a tutorial and much more. The Freeze-Framer has been specially designed to teach you how to bring your emotions, mind and body into greater coherence. With your Freeze-Framer you can see your heart rhythm patterns in real time on the computer screen. When you apply the Quick Coherence tool you can see the changes in your heart rhythm (HRV) patterns. By correlating the patterns on the screen with a calm internal feeling, you learn to find and maintain physiological coherence. 01/26/06 - Free phone calls using FireFox The Zoep Firefox extension allows VOIPSter the ability to make phone calls using the Mozilla Firefox internet browser. Zoep is a plugin with Firefox which allows users to make free telephone calls and chat directly from the Firefox browser. The Zoep extension provides users of Firefox with a clear voice experience without having to switch between applications. Users will now be able to communicate with any other VoIP user on the open source based OpenZoep platform, so in addition to being able to communicate with other Zoep users using Firefox, they can also communicate with users on the Jabber platform including, sometime in the future, those using Google Talk. Firefox is growing by popular demand, as the browser has adopted security features already that are not available yet in Microsoft IE (until version IE 7). If you haven't tried Firefox, give a spin. It's fast, easy, and offers auto-updates on any new security fixes to block malware and other malicious software. You can download a free copy at the top of the keelynet.com webpage. (I also recommend Mozilla's free Thunderbird email software.) 01/26/06 - Improvement patents extend inventor's rights Once a patent expires, the invention covered by that patent enters the public domain and anyone can make and sell it, local attorneys say. But Scott Stevens, a partner at Woodard, Emhardt, Moriarty, McNett & Henry, suggests that if you continue to make improvements on your original invention, you may be able to apply for patents on those improvements. "As long as your improvements cover something that people want, improvement patents can effectively extend your patent coverage monopoly," Stevens said. Stevens also noted that other people can also make improvements to a basic patented invention and file for patents on those improvements. However, the improved products cannot be sold without first getting a license from you for the basic product. The Patent and Trademark Office will extend the term of your patent if its issuance was delayed due to examination and processing delays. You can also get an extension if the sale of a product covered by the patent was delayed due to government regulatory review. This occurs most often with drug manufacturers' patents, whose products are often held up in FDA reviews and approvals. 01/26/06 - Light transmitting concrete for free lighting 29-year-old entrepreneur Aron Losonczi said he had designed his LiTraCon concrete by mixing extra optical fibers with the basic material. The final component is translucent yet as solid as a traditional concrete. Time magazine has described his innovation as one of the most significant inventions of 2004. Responding to an article in the New York Times last summer noting that the concrete would be too expensive, Losonczi told MTI that 60-70 percent of the costs had to be spent on purchasing the optical fibers, and it was indeed an up-market product. But he insisted there was a market for his invention nevertheless. Any future mass production would achieve economies of scale and bring down the final cost, he added. 01/26/06 - Firm offers robots to care for aged & work as receptionists People Staff Co. said Wednesday it will begin offering the use of robots to care for residents of homes for the aged or work as receptionists at offices, beginning in February. The service is the first of its kind by a staffing service company, according to the Nagoya-based firm. 01/26/06 - Titania Nanotube Arrays Harness Solar Energy Penn State University researchers are finding new ways to harness the power of the sun using highly-ordered arrays of titania nanotubes for hydrogen production and increased solar cell efficiency. “Basically we are talking about taking sunlight and putting water on top of this material, and the sunlight turns the water into hydrogen and oxygen. With the highly-ordered titanium nanotube arrays, under UV illumination you have a photoconversion efficiency of 13.1%. Which means, in a nutshell, you get a lot of hydrogen out of the system per photon you put in. If we could successfully shift its bandgap into the visible spectrum we would have a commercially practical means of generating hydrogen by solar energy. It beats fighting wars over middle-eastern oil.” 01/26/06 - Moon's gravity dragging continents west Someday not so soon Washington, D.C., may find itself about where San Francisco is now. According to a recent study, Earth's surface may be slipping slowly westward, dragged by the same lunar forces that produce tides. As the Earth spins eastward beneath the moon, they say, the moon's gravity ever so slightly holds the Earth's surface layer back. This "lunar drag" causes the crust to slip slowly backward, like a loose handgrip on a bicycle handlebar. 01/25/06 - Jamison Energizer - the 200,000 mile car (Kudos and Thanks to Robert Nelson of Rex Research who recently discovered this 'lost' Jamison patent application! - JWD) San Francisco Examiner (Sat., January 3, 1981), p. A6 - A Mississippi mechanic claims he has invented an electric car that will run 200,000 miles without gasoline, oil, water or even recharging. Larry Jamison calls the motor “the Jamison Energizer”. The 65-year old Nettleton, Mississippi man commutes to Memphis seven days a week to labor on his invention, housed in his one-room shop. He says he can wire the dozen or so cylindrical-shaped motors and energizers into virtually any truck or car --- at a cost of about $6,000. “The difference between this motor and all the other electrical cars on the market is that mine never needs to be recharged”, he said. “It produces more electricity than it uses and stores it in batteries. “Also, those other cars don’t have any real power. I’ve got a motor that will outdo your Cadillacs and your Lincolns. When we get into production, I’ll guarantee the motor for 200,000 miles”. Jamison Thursday displayed a 1977 Ford Courier pickup equipped with a Jamison Energizer. He admits it has a couple of “small bugs”. Jamison’s secret is a shiny metal cylinder a little mor than a foot long and about 10 inches in diameter. He won’t discuss what makes it work. Jamison says he’s been contacted by major firms in Germany, France, and the US, but doesn’t plan to make a deal. “But I ain’t going to let nobody have it”, he said. “I want to manufacture it myself”. European Patent Application EP 0 067 755 - An energy producing system is provided which produces energy for use, for example, in an electric vehicle or in a home power plant. The system includes an electrical energizer including a double wound rotor and a double wound stator, for producing electrical energy which is stored in the system, e.g., in a battery storage arrangement, which provides initial energization of the system. The stored energy is supplied to an electrical motor which drives the energizer to thereby create additional energy. The energizer is able to supply the needs of the system as well as to power a load. In a specific preferred embodiment, the motor described is a 48 volt, 412 horsepower motor (412 X 760 watts = 313,120 Watts) (313,120 watts / 48 volts = 6,523AMPS), having a top operating speed of 7,000 rpm. 01/25/06 - Google Earth catches flying car (Could just be a car wreck in progress, need sequential photos of the entire process. - JWD) According to our Oz photo interpretation bureau (Clinton Bird), the vehicle in question is at an altitude of three of four metres and doing about 80 knots (92mph). Which rules out a rocket-powered project, and we can see no evidence of the Wankel-powered turbofan outrigger engines favoured by the Moller Corporation. Which leaves just one possible explantion: the Aussies have developed a gravity-busting hyperdrive, have bolted it into a second-hand Holden, and are seen here in the split second before their X-Motor made the transdimensional leap to hyper light speed. For those of you still doing it by hand, try Honour Avenue, Point Walter, Perth. 01/25/06 - Does free energy couple at 400hz? (Interesting that military devices often use 440hz. - JWD) Just like a photon, Teslion is a corpuscular form of "matter state", expressed in our Unity as a stable object of order 9, with a quite real rest mass: m0 = 1.1*10- 49 kg. Wave form of the same object, named Tesla waves, have compton wavelength of lc=2*107 [m], i.e. frequency of 14.8 Hz. As we know, frequency of 11.47 Hz is already known as a Tesla's frequency. This fact was a basic reason for naming "stable-object-9" a TESLION. Peak energy level of a K9-object, whose wave form of "space-time-matter" entity we called Tesla waves, is l = lc * (1-v2/vmax2)1/2 = 20.04*106*0.037 = 741480 m, which corresponds to frequency of 404.59 Hz. As we know, most of "zero point", "free energy", and all different kinds of "overunity" devices (Thomas Moray Radiant device, Floyd Sweet VTA,...,Michel Mace Solid state energy converter etc.) provide maximal output energy with current whose frequency is about 400 Hz! Amazingly, "Earth - radius - resonant - length" is Rp = 6.38*106 * 3.14 = 2.004*107 m, which is almost equal to Tesla-waves compton wavelength:lc=2*107 [m]. 01/25/06 - Notes on the Black Box Patent US Patent # 2,482,773 - Detection of Emanations from Materials & Measurement of the Volumes Thereof - September 27, 1949 - Thomas G. Hieronymous. Each of the tissues of the body give off a characteristic frequency of radiation by which it can be identified and the virility or vitality of the tissue may be determined by noting the intensity of the radiation. Each disease entity gives off a characteristic emanation by which its presence in the body and something of its virility may be determined. Just as a photograph can hold the emanation of the object photographed, so can a specimen, an article of clothing, a drop of blood, urine or perspiration carry the emanations of the person from whence it came. Wen the operators mind and the emanations from the tuner are in resonance, the detector indicates this mode.There is a change in tactile characteristic in the top of the detector, and this is detected by lightly rubbing the fingertips on the surface of the detector plate, while turning the vernier dial of the prism.When this resonance is established, by the position of the dial, ad the thought held in the mind of the operator, a note is made of the prism angle. Direct transfer of data to the operator mind and more is then possble, thru sympathetic resonance, that has no distance barriers. In 1958, more than 80% of the rocket and guided missle scientists & engineers at the White Sands Proving Grounds, who tried the device, built by G. Harry Stine, a full time engineer, employed by the U.S. Naval Ordinance Missle Test Center, got a response using his version of the "blackbox". The most interesting response came from Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto. He reported: " The change in touch sensation on the plate is there, but to me it is just at the threshold of sensation, much like seeing fine details on a planetary surface." Approx. 80-90% of the people who try it get a response they can detect. Dr. Hieronymous has established numbers which correlate with the known chemical elements, and their combinations. When the Fine Media is properly influenced, it can be caused to coalesce to the point where material units such as electrons, protons, and neutrons are formed. When these units are desired to be grouped together, a still further manifestation of the Fine Media takes the form of the cohesive force necessary to form the units into elements such as helium, iron, gold, and uranium. A still further manifestation of the cohesive force is necessary to form elements into compound or complex groups. When such units are formed into elements or compounds, there is a stress field, or aura, around or radiating from such elements and complex groups. This field or aura has a frequency that is characteristic for each nuclear and molecular combination. 01/25/06 - A new way to help computers recognize patterns Researchers at Ohio State University have found a way to boost the development of pattern recognition software by taking a different approach from that used by most experts in the field. The majority of pattern recognition algorithms in science and engineering today are derived from the same basic equation and employ the same methods, collectively called linear feature extraction, Martinez said. Martinez and Zhu tested machine vision algorithms using two databases, one of objects such as apples and pears, and another database of faces with different expressions. The two tasks -- sorting objects and identifying expressions -- are sufficiently different that an algorithm could potentially be good at doing one but not at the other. The test rates algorithms on a scale from zero to one. The closer the score is to zero, the better the algorithm. The test worked: An algorithm that received a score of 0.2 for sorting faces was right 98 percent of the time. That same algorithm scored 0.34 for sorting objects, and was right only 70 percent of the time when performing that task. Another algorithm scored 0.68 and sorted objects correctly only 33 percent of the time. "So a score like 0.68 means 'don't waste your time,'" Martinez said. "You don't have to go to the trouble to run it and find out that it's wrong two-thirds of the time." He hopes that researchers across a broad range of disciplines will try out this new test. His team has already started using it to optimize the algorithms they use to study language and cancer genetics. 01/25/06 - Cellphone Powered by Urine Physicists in Singapore have developed a battery that can be powered by human urine. Led by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a team at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology developed a paper battery which is designed to be cheap to produce, and use urine as its power charge source. Using 0.2 ml of urine, the team were able to generate a voltage of around 1.5 Volts with a corresponding maximum power of 1.5 mW. Battery performance can also be adjusted by using different construction materials. The battery is made from a layer of paper that is soaked in copper chloride (CuCl) and then sandwiched between strips of magnesium and copper. The final product has dimensions of 6cm x 3cm, and a thickness of just 1 mm. 01/25/06 - Women gradually take the world under their control Women are being elected presidents in different countries. "I wonder if anybody could imagine a female president in Chile some 20 years or 10 years ago, even 5 years ago," said Chile's new president Michelle Bachelet shortly after being sworn in. It is worthy of note that Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated also this week as a new president of Liberia. She became the first woman who became head of state in the history of Africa. Few analysts doubt that Tarja Halonen will win in a runoff of the presidential election in Finland. The importance of a physical force is gradually decreasing. A rational analysis that is a characteristic of the male seems less important these days than intuition, a female quality. A person of the past was supposed to concentrate on one important business (suitable for men). Nowadays it is essential that a person be able to keep several projects going. Making decisions on a 'friend or foe' basis was an important requirement of the past. Today you should carefully build interpersonal relations in order to succeed. I am not talking about politics only. The role of women in managing various institutions can only grow bigger. Thus far the majority of female politicians, the so-called 'iron ladies, have displayed men's qualities.' I believe soon those ladies will be replaced by female politicians that will do men's job in a female way. Yulia Tymoshenko is one of the most flagrant examples. 01/25/06 - Breakthrough with VTA replication? I have now been working on a public replication of the Floyd Sweet VTA for nearly 12 months. On the 29-12-05 I posted an update with a real break through in the theory on the working of the VTA. This explains cold energy collection. I have had a lot of help from a lot of very good people and together we have made this theory solid and it not only fits with the current model but introduces new possibilities and they will be very exciting when this technology becomes main stream. If this is right, which I am 100% confident that it is, the scientific community has a lot of work in front of them. We do to. I wont mention any names but many brilliant Scientific minds have helped me. Thanks to them and remember it is a public project. You can help too. Details to date (via zpenergy.com) 01/25/06 - Political bias affects brain activity, study finds Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. A brain-scan technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said."We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." With their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained. The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. "None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones." 01/24/06 - Magnetricity NeoGen PM Dynamo (Thanks to Patrick Bailey of INE for this headsup. He recommends you save the pages on this site. - JWD) Based on the late Bill Mullers' work with super magnets in a motor/generator design, this site describes Rex Hebert's ongoing research into developing a self-running permanent magnet dynamo. CONICAL WINDING as described by Peter Lindermann ... at Keelynet Convergence 2001 - A unique zero resistance core design where an increase in the current required by the load results in no resistance to the magnet motion past the coil core, the design for a normal solenoidal coil has the wire wound from top to bottom and as the magnet passes the coil, the resistance to its passage increases as the load current requirements increase (remember the old army hand cranked telephone field generator - the more load you hook to it, the harder it is to turn the handle), This new design has a core where the winding begins roughly 1/3 to 1/2 down the length of the core and the windings increase in turns as it approaches the bottom of the core, taking the form of a cone with the apex pointing up, This is quite similar to the HomoPolar motor which does not experience any resistance no matter how much current is extracted by the load devices. PERPETUAL MOTION : The Inevitable Question * How this notion haunts us all ... our primary ridicule from the shortsighted * Let me be absolutely clear on this point, this is NOT, in any way, a Perpetual Motion Device. Thank you. * Perpetual Motion implies eternity. Nothing manmade is eternal. Neither will this device run forever. This is the way of all technology. * Eventually, some component will breakdown or wear physically or fail electrically resulting in enough down time to replace or repair the component. Afterwards, the device may be restarted and run until the next failure. * HOWEVER, the recent availability of affordable Rare-Earth Neodymium Iron Boron permanent magnets brings us closer than ever to achieving such a device. * My main goal is to maximize energy output and RUN time and minimize the DOWN time by minimizing energy losses wherever possible such as heat, wear, friction, drag, vibration, etc. and by choice of materials for extended life. The usefulness of such a device in rural or desolate areas of the world should be obvious to anyone. 01/24/06 - MPG geothermal generator in 2nd phase In Phase Two, the Encore/ThermaSource venture proposes to engineer, build and demonstrate a larger-scale MPG, designed to be installed on a geothermal well-bore, connected to heat exchangers in a closed-loop for converting the "free fuel" of geothermal heat into a valuable new source of electricity. ThermaSource has received a conditional commitment letter from a major geothermal facility in The Geysers geothermal field in Northern California to test the Phase Two MPG geothermal heat recovery unit. 01/24/06 - Used cooking oil heats a diner (Thanks to Dwayne Phillips for the headsup! - JWD) The owner of Deluxe Town Diner found a way to slash his fuel bill for heating and hot water to $0 during some weeks this winter: a new system that runs on the 30 or 40 gallons of vegetable oil he uses every week for cooking fries, plus oil he collects from a nearby pizzeria and a pair of Chinese restaurants. Using 100 percent vegetable oil as Levy does requires a special boiler. A blend of fossil fuel and vegetable oil can be used in a conventional boiler. Over the last two years, several hundred homeowners and many businesses in Massachusetts have begun buying so-called bioheat fuels. These fuels typically blend 80 percent conventional fuel oil and 20 percent vegetable oil or 90 percent conventional and 10 percent vegetable fuel, and usually cost 10 to 20 cents a gallon more than fossil fuel. 01/24/06 - Australia PMs climate plan could 'lift temperatures 4C' Environment group World Wide Fund for Nature said yesterday the plan by the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate to ease global warming would see greenhouse emissions more than double in its six member nations. At the first APP meeting in Sydney last week, government advisory body the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics predicted the partnership's plans would leave greenhouse gas emissions 23per cent lower than they would otherwise have been by 2050. Those plans include the creation of a low-emissions technology fund and eight taskforces charged with reducing greenhouse emissions in industry sectors and accelerating the development and deployment of low- and zero-emissions technology. But WWF warned that the ABARE scenario condemns Australia to catastrophic climate change, including species extinction, a 148per cent rise in bushfires, increased storm damage and the deterioration of areas such as Kakadu National Park and the Great Barrier Reef. WWF Australian chief executive Greg Bourne said: "The Australian Government is willing to sacrifice public health and safety, the lifestyles of millions of Australians and our most treasured natural icons to pursue a business as usual energy path." 01/24/06 - Hyperdrive Motor for superfast space travel (Thanks to Bert Pool for the headsup! - JWD) Last year's winner in the nuclear and future flight category went to a paper calling for experimental tests of an astonishing new type of engine. According to the paper, this hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics. Can they possibly be serious? Burkhard Heim began to explore the hyperdrive propulsion concept in the 1950s as a spin-off from his attempts to heal the biggest divide in physics: the rift between quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity. In Heim's view of space and time, he claimed it is possible to convert electromagnetic energy into gravitational and back again, and speculated that a rotating magnetic field could reduce the influence of gravity on a spacecraft enough for it to take off. In its present design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible. Sandia runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which "could probably generate the necessary field intensities and gradients". 01/24/06 - New Device to Detect Skin Cancer From A Picture? (Thanks to Bob Paddock for the headsup! - JWD) News.com is reporting on a new machine that can tell you all about your skin's unique features (excessive oil, UV damage, etc.) using an image scan and software to analyze it. Its inventors plan on developing a version that can even detect skin cancer." From the article: "Apart from numbers, the technology, called Clarity Pro, can depict the depth and severity of wrinkles in a 3D chart, show the extent of bacteria-filled pores in a graph, or represent UV damage in purple dots scattered about your face in a white-light image. It can also calculate how long a person can be exposed to the sun, in minutes or hours a day, before incurring more UV damage." 01/24/06 - Pollution-busting plants to clean up contaminated land Decades of military activity have resulted in pollution of land and groundwater by explosives resistant to biological degradation. Large tracts of land used for military training, particularly in the USA, are contaminated by RDX, one of the most widely-used explosives, which is both highly toxic and carcinogenic. The six-strong CNAP team has isolated a bacterial micro-organism in the soil in contaminated land that can utilise the explosives as a source of nitrogen for growth. But, because RDX is so mobile in soil, the bacteria present are not degrading it quickly enough to stop the contamination of land and ground water. So the York team has redeployed the enzyme in the bacteria into plants, giving them the ability to biodegrade the pollutant more efficiently. Professor Bruce said: "We have taken that activity from the bacteria and put it in plants with large amounts of biomass. A tree, for instance, is effectively a big pump, seeking out water, and if we can redeploy the enzyme which degrades the explosive making it harmless, it combines the capabilities of soil bacteria with the high biomass and uptake properties in plants. The CNAP team are now extending the technique to robust plants species such as trees, including aspen and poplar, and perennial grasses. The technique can also be used to modify plants to resist other organic pollutants. 01/23/06 - Tinkerers build dual fuel diesel generator Jones, who describes himself as just a hands-on ranch kid, and Ritter, an electrician by trade, developed and patented their gaseous-fuel-delivery dual-fuel system three years ago and have been working to get the devices into the methane fields since then. Their company, TGI, which stands for Terry Greg Inc., has been testing and tweaking the systems since 2002 on some of the 180 generators owned by Northland Industrial, another company owned by Jones. The dual-fuel systems mix natural gas into the air intake of diesel engines, increasing the combustibility of the air and reducing the amount of diesel needed by as much as 90 percent, although 50 percent to 75 percent is more typical. One of the major advantages for methane companies is that the natural gas can come directly from the wellhead. Major benefits of the system include reduced fuel costs and lower emission levels than straight diesel generators, Jones said. And the diesel engine makes the machinery more reliable than systems that use natural gas only, Jones said. Natural gas can freeze, but diesel won't, a concern that Paul McElvery, a water resources engineer with Bill Barrett Corp., said his company had with the devices. Running electrical lines out to wells is expensive, and having a system that can power itself would make economic sense for natural gas companies, McElvery said. "Run it right off the wellhead with some sort of pretax benefit on the natural gas," he said. "I love the idea." Ritter said that the idea has been well received by people in the methane industry, many of whom refused to comment, citing company policies. However, there is still concern that the dual-fuel systems could ruin engines and void warranties. Jones and Ritter currently rent the devices to companies for $200 to $400 per month, depending on the size of the generator. But soon they'll begin marketing the product on its own, with versions costing between $2,500 and $15,000. In a market where a new diesel generator costs anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, the rental fee seems minuscule because, as Jones points out, the device can bring old generators into compliance with new federal regulations on diesel engine emissions. There have been many attempts at putting together such a system, and Terry said one of the keys to their success was keeping it simple. To look at a finished system, one could easily mistake it for an Erector set, maybe even a robot sans joints. The hoses and gauges and piping are held up like a hobby horse by two triangular pieces of steel that can be attached to the top of generators in less than an hour. Once on, the devices can monitor engine load and oxygen output to regulate the amount of natural gas that is being used and measure the level of pollution in the air. When businesses have decided they don't need the devices anymore, they can be taken off in about two minutes, Jones said. A little more refinement could mean the devices being used on generators, trucks, trains and maybe even airplanes, Ritter said. 01/23/06 - Cat parasite alters human behavior Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious. (via boingboing.com) 01/23/06 - 'The UK Times' on Changing America 01/23/06 - Remote non-contact Lie Detector The US Department of Defense has revealed plans to develop a lie detector that can be used without the subject knowing they are being assessed. The Remote Personnel Assessment (RPA) device will also be used to pinpoint fighters hiding in a combat zone, or even to spot signs of stress that might mark someone out as a terrorist or suicide bomber. In a call for proposals on a DoD website, contractors are being given until 13 January to suggest ways to develop the RPA, which will use microwave or laser beams reflected off a subject's skin to assess various physiological parameters without the need for wires or skin contacts. The device will train a beam on "moving and non-cooperative subjects", the DoD proposal says, and use the reflected signal to calculate their pulse, respiration rate and changes in electrical conductance, known as the "galvanic skin response". "Active combatants will in general have heart, respiratory and galvanic skin responses that are outside the norm," the website says. Because these parameters are the same as those assessed by a polygraph lie detector, the DoD claims the RPA will also indicate the subject's psychological state: if they are agitated or stressed because they are lying, for example. So it will be used as a "remote or concealed lie detector during prisoner interrogation". But finding ways to fulfil the DoD's brief will pose a practical challenge, says Robert Prance, an electrical engineer at the University of Sussex, UK, who specialises in non-invasive sensors. "They might capture breathing rate with an infrared laser that senses chest vibration, but how they will measure a pulse through clothes, for instance, is a very big question." 01/23/06 - New technique for multiplying adult stem cells 30 fold Researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member and MIT professor of biology Harvey Lodish have discovered a way to multiply an adult stem cell 30-fold, an expansion that offers tremendous promise for treatments such as bone marrow transplants and perhaps even gene therapy. "A 30-fold increase is ten times higher than anyone's achieved before," says Lodish, senior author on the paper, which will be published January 22 online in Nature Medicine. Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are generally tissue-specific, each one destined to develop into several kinds of cells. Chengcheng Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lodish lab, was determined to develop a way to multiply adult stem cells once they've been isolated from tissue. Achieving this goal required some intricate laboratory sleuthing. 01/23/06 - St. Joseph the flying comic book hero Joseph of Copertino, a Franciscan priest renowned for his ability to levitate, will join the world of costumed crusaders next week when a new graphic novel is published in Britain and America. The Flying Friar, by Rich Johnston and Thomas Nachlik, is based on one of the Church’s most extraordinary saints who, although canonised for his extreme modesty and patience, is more remarkable for his apparent ability to fly and demonstrate supernatural strength. Only after being admitted as a novice to a Franciscan order in Grottella did he begin to display his powers, which were witnessed by people of unchallenged integrity, according to the Vatican. Joseph’s most spectacular feats were his ability to soar high over the chapel’s altars and, on one occasion, to help workmen to erect a Calvary Cross 36ft high by levitating himself and lifting the heavy cross “as if it were straw”. Until now he has found fame as the patron saint of pilots and air stewards, but next week The Flying Friar will arrive in comic bookshops across Britain. 01/23/06 - Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Freezing Assets Along with Their Bodies Several wealthy 'cryonauts,' who freeze their bodies after death in the hope of someday being revived, are exploring ways to hold onto their wealth in the frosty hereafter -- in effect, leaving their money to themselves. At least a dozen wealthy American and foreign businessmen are testing unfamiliar legal territory by creating so-called personal revival trusts designed to allow them to reclaim their riches hundreds, or even thousands, of years into the future. To serve clients who plan on being frozen, attorneys are tweaking so-called dynasty trusts that can legally endure hundreds of years, or even indefinitely. Such trusts, once widely prohibited, are now allowed by more than 20 states -- including Arizona, Illinois and New Jersey -- and typically are used to shield assets from estate taxes. They pay out funds to a person's children, grandchildren and future generations. People interested in cryonics are mostly male, frequently single, and typically have a strong interest in technology and predicting future events. And yet it's hard to know just how wide-spread the phenomenon of personal revival trusts is, since some wealthy individuals may fear ridicule if their hopes for immortality became known. 01/23/06 - Free B&W photo Recoloring Software Software Recolored makes colorizing your black and white photos a relatively simple task. To add color to a photo, all you have to do is add markings to the different regions of the image, indicating how it should be colorized. Then click the Colorize button and let the software do the rest. Recolored looks pretty awesome, though I’m not sure just how difficult it is to use. The video tutorial certainly makes it look very easy (though Bob Ross makes painting look easy, so who knows?). Recolored is free for non-commercial use, Windows only. (via lifehacker.com) 01/23/06 - Is something worse going on with Iran? Ahmadinejad called for more than wiping Israel off the face of the earth. It wasn't just a world without Zionism and Israel that Ahmadinejad and his friends in Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups were envisioning. It was a world without the United States of America. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it is literally true. Examine for yourself the photos published here of Ahmadinejad addressing the Tehran conference Oct. 26, 2005. Yes, that is a ball representing the USA cracked at the bottom of that hourglass - with another representing Israel falling later. It wasn't just the imagery of the conference that was overlooked, ignored, unreported and underplayed by the world press. It was also the anti-American substance of Ahmadinejad's speech. "Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" he asked. "But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved." Iran has developed a strategic "war preparation plan" for what it calls the "destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization." 01/23/06 - Kuwait oil reserves only half official estimate Kuwait's actual oil reserves, which are officially stated at around 99 billion barrels, or close to 10 percent of the global total, are a good deal lower, according to internal Kuwaiti records," the weekly PIW reported on Friday. It said that according to data circulated in Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC), the upstream arm of state Kuwait Petroleum Corp, Kuwait's remaining proven and non-proven oil reserves are about 48 billion barrels. 01/23/06 - Experts warn of $100 U.S. a barrel oil with Iran conflict Nervous investors look on as conflict rages in several strategic areas of the world, involving nations as disparate as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Venezuela, China and the United States. This morning, crude oil rose again in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude oil for March delivery spiked as much as 72 cents, or 1.1 per cent, to $69.20, as a cold front sweeps across Europe. Experts say the Iran issue alone could push oil prices past $100 a barrel. If the U.N. Security Council were to authorize sanctions against Tehran, which the West accuses of trying to make nuclear bombs, Iran has threatened to curb oil exports in retaliation. "Even if Iran pulled a small amount of its oil off the market, say it pulled a half million barrels a day, I could see oil prices literally jumping over the $100 per barrel mark," said James Bartis, a senior researcher at Rand Corp. A sharp global economic slowdown could follow. That's the dilemma the United States and European nations face as they decide whether to act. 01/22/06 - Home Power from your car/truck engine An electrical generator system that is powered by a truck or motor home engine. The generator is mounted on the vehicle and is controlled by the vehicle's computer hardware and software for optimum voltage control, frequency control and fuel economy. The system produces enough electrical power to start and run a 3-ton air-conditioning system along with numerous other devices simultaneously. Where the product is available: More than 400 locations nationwide. In Indiana, it's available at Andy Mohr Ford in Plainfield, Kenny Vice Ford in Ladoga and Wabash Ford Sterling in Indianapolis. Company address: Contour Hardening, 8401 Northwest Blvd., Indianapolis 01/22/06 - The link between Nutrition and Mental Health Changes in the way food is produced have reduced the amounts of essential fats, vitamins and minerals consumed, and have altered the balance of nutrients in foods. In particular, the use of pesticides and changes to the diets of animals has altered their body fat composition, meaning that the population's intake of omega-3 has declined but omega-6 has increased. This, the charities say, combined with a general lack of vitamins and minerals, can leave people more open to depression, concentration and memory problems. Moreover amino acids, which make up neurotransmitters in the brain, are vital to good mental health. Many of these must be derived from the diet, and a deficiency can lead to depression, apathy and an inability to relax. Researcher Courtney Van de Weyer said that although the diet for a healthy mind is the same as that required for a healthy body, food and farming policies - especially on fish - need to change in order to safeguard the future of the UK's healthy food supply. What is more, the UK population has veered away from fresh produce, replacing fruit and veg with not-so-healthy alternatives like ready meals and take-away. These contain new substances like additives, pesticides and trans fats which, either alone or in combination, are said to impede the proper functioning of the brain. The trend towards unhealthier eating appears to be particularly prevalent in the younger generation, and it does not bode well for the future: the NOP showed that only 29 percent of 15 to 24 year olds report eating a meal prepared from scratch each day, compared to 50 percent of over-65s. According to the report mental health costs the UK almost £100 billion (€75 billion) a year. Celia Richardson, director of communications for The Mental Health Foundation, was unable to tell NutraIngredients.com how much the mental health bill might be reduced by the government altering its policy. But she did say that prescriptions for anti-depressants in England have increased by 2000 percent in the last 12 years. The report has also been circulated to the Department for Education and Skills since it contains information on the importance of nutrition for children's learning ability; the Home Office because of recommendations for prison facilities to do with the effect of fish oils on antisocial behaviour of young offenders; and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport concerning the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Richardson said that, in particular, studies looking at the supplementation of antidepressants with the amino acid tryptophan have made people sit up and think about nutrition. 01/22/06 - Gardening Myths Does music make plants grow more luxuriantly? Should you plant trees deeply so roots won't dry out? Do coffee grounds change soil pH? Probably not, absolutely not, and not really. Plants are subject to all kinds of noise, including human chatter and music, and Gillman sees little proof that any of it makes much difference, although music and conversation, even one-sided, may well be therapeutic for the gardener. Planting deeply is more likely to smother or drown the tree than to help it, and other soil acidifiers are more effective than coffee. As coffee breaks down, though, it does provide nutrients that benefit some plants (lettuce) while harming others (tomatoes). A warning: Compost-tea advocates won't like Gillman's conclusions. But he does advocate a saucer of beer for slug control and advises that homemade deer and rodent repellents are as effective as commercial ones. 01/22/06 - 'Wristwatch' biosensor to track alcohol use The device can monitor whether someone has been drinking over days and weeks - substantially longer than tests of blood, breath or urine and much more sensitively than biochemical measures - some problems remain. “As is, the device measures the alcohol content in sweat, but what we want to know is what’s going on with alcohol levels in the blood,” said Rosen. “What our group is trying to understand, mathematically, is how does what you see in sweat relate to what’s in the blood?” One of the central tasks in building a rigorous model of alcohol metabolism is to define the parameters - from sex, weight and age to the rate of diffusion of alcohol through the layers of skin. Based on biological data collected by Swift and others, the team has already incorporated more than two dozen parameters into the model. In the lab, Swift can calibrate the biosensor to an individual by giving the person a known amount of alcohol while they are wearing the device, and then using a Breathalyzer to determine the concentration of alcohol in the blood. The clinical data “gives you the parameters for one person,” Rosen said. But in order to use the monitor in practical applications in the field, researchers need to calibrate the device not simply to a specific individual but to general group parameters. In spite of these challenges, the team has made substantial headway in the two years since the project began. “We’ve got a forward model that mathematically describes alcohol’s movement through the body - from ingestion to the blood to the sweat,” Rosen said. 01/22/06 - Exporting Plutonium to Pluto Outbound at 36,000 miles an hour, the spacecraft will cover the distance to the moon in just nine hours - a trip that took the Apollo astronauts three days. By early 2007, it will be hurtling past Jupiter, using the giant planet's gravity to sling it even faster toward the outer solar system. Like NASA's other deep space probes, the Pluto-bound spacecraft gets its electrical power from a compact radioisotope thermoelectric generator, powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium. Bruce Gagnon, of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power contends that a launch accident would scatter plutonium over a large area of central Florida. He discounts the space agency's record of 24 successful launches with similar plutonium generators. "One thing we have learned is that sooner or later, space technology can fail," he says. The plutonium power source will provide 200 watts of power for the spacecraft - about what it takes to light two standard light bulbs - but that will be enough to operate all seven of its scientific instruments during the encounter with Pluto as well as to transmit pictures and data to Earth. 01/22/06 - U.S. space tourists would face security checks Paying customers on commercially run flights to space would have to meet security requirements, but would not have to pass specific medical tests, according to draft U.S. regulations. The FAA said in a draft proposal last week that commercial operators would have to advise passengers about all safety risks, including the number of flights by the space vehicle and the number of problems experienced on the ground and during flight. "Space flight remains inherently risky," the agency said. Each traveler would have to meet training standards for emergency situations, including a loss of cabin pressure as well as fire and emergency evacuation procedures. Passengers also would have to clear a security check - similar to airline passengers' - to guard against any chance a space tourist would try to destroy the rocket or interfere with the flight crew and use it as a weapon. The FAA recommends that operators could consult the Homeland Security Department's global "no fly" list. The FAA did not initially set specific medical requirements but recommended travelers review their medical history to determine whether they are fit. 01/22/06 - Anti-missle 'force field' for tanks The British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket- propelled grenades, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signalled, writes Michael Smith. The electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world. It will also confound repeated claims from military experts that “the tank is dead” because more nimble forces are required for the war on terror. The invention is just as effective against the “shaped charge” roadside bombs used by insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The armour is also much lighter, with about two tons of it reckoned to provide protection equivalent to that of 20 tons of conventional armour. The new vehicles - which are expected to enter service early in the next decade - would be smaller and lighter, enabling them to be moved by C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. The electric armour is made up of several layers, the first of which is an earthed bulletproof outer skin. The second skin is live, although insulated, and has several thousand volts of electricity flowing through it, powered by the vehicle’s battery. The third skin is the normal vehicle hull. When an RPG7 grenade hits a tank with standard armour, its conical warhead fires a jet of hot copper into the target at about 1,000mph. This can penetrate more than a foot of conventional solid steel armour. On the electric armour, the grenade penetrates the insulation on the live second skin, creating a sudden surge in electricity that vaporises the copper stream in the same way that a surge burns out a fuse wire. The effect is to leave the inner hull intact and the crew safe, with the vehicle capable of taking repeated hits. 01/21/06 - Invention of 'Alternative Soil' to reclaim deserts The "Alternative Soil" invention by two UAE engineers, Hadi Al Mansouri and Khalid Mubarak Saeed is considered as a major break-through in the science of agrology. It is crucial for the agricultural development of the country not only because it will curb desertification but also because it will lead to reclamation of vast barren areas which are now lost to aridity and desertification. The innovation is the first ever of its kind in the world. "In simple terms, the alternative soil is derived from a technical treatment of tree, plant and household waste by adding substances that enable the soil to enhance its fertility and keep up to 80 per cent of its irrigation water for as longer period as possible", said Khalid Mubarak Saeed, a co-inventor. He revealed that the invention was announced after laboratory experiments that achieved excellent results. These results, he added, proved that the alternative soil far out-performed even the most fertile of soils, including clay soil that is usually found on the Nile Delta. It is environment-friendly and viable. It is also easy to produce in the sense that you only need to transfer red soil from Al Ain, for example, to any part of the UAE. All that you need to produce this soil is mixture of paper, wood, plant and agro-wastes, in addition to some chemical substances. A treatment of these elements produces alternative soil". Al Mansouri told the Abu Dhabi-based "Al Assima Magazine" that the technical features of the alternative soil are that it tends to be solid, a solidity that enhances the fabric of subsoil and thereby prevent sand movement. Lack of sand movement is a key factor in stiffening the soil and therefore curbing desertification, explained Al Mansouri. "This pioneering invention could be used to improve various soils, including saline and clay soils. We have reached conclusions that it is only the ecology that determines fertility factors of the soil. When we conducted experiments in high-saline and clay soils, the results were impressive. Even in environments where temperature was 47 degrees, the performance of alternative soil was excellent. If land reclamation was seen in the past as an expensive project, it will now become very easy with this new technology. All that is needed to reclaim a land is to cover it with a layer of alternative soil that has a thickness of just 3 centimeters. After a period of between 2-6 weeks, an another layer will begin to form as a result of many factors. This new layer will be fertile for agriculture. It will continue to grow as it is nurtured by plants' roots until its thickness reaches 10 centimeters". Apart from the enormous benefits of land reclamation and desertification stoppage, the invention will enable UAE farmers to lessen if not abandon the use of fertilisers. 01/21/06 - America's Fears - Today and Tomorrow Future Brief is pleased to announce the results of a national poll gauging public opinion on a variety of issues. This week, our results show that Americans feel most threatened by terrorism and crime and that Americans predict that genetic engineering will have the greatest impact on their lives ten years from now. In this poll, we asked Americans which factors, from terrorism to nuclear war, posed the greatest threat to their security; how they felt that technology would affect their lives ten years from now; and how they felt the government should respond to a deadly pandemic. The poll of more than 2,000 Americans was conducted by Zogby International, one of America’s leading opinion research organizations. The results of the poll can be found on our website. 01/21/06 - Suspended Animation A surgeon claims to have induced and successfully reversed severe hypothermia, thereby putting patients in a state of suspended animation for as long as three hours while he drained their blood and fixed their wounds. So far all the patients have been pigs. Hasan Alam, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has lowered the body temperature of pigs from 98.6F to 50F some 200 times with a 90 percent success rate. Last spring a team from Seattle announced that they had put mice into a similar state by putting them in a chamber filled with air laced with 80 parts per million (ppm) of hydrogen sulphide (H2S). In those experiments body temperature was lowered to 51.8F for six hours. "If you can manipulate the metabolism of animals in this way with implications for humans then I could see very widespread applications," commented John Speakman, professor of zoology at the University of Aberdeen. "There is military interest in short-duration hibernation for battlefield stabilisation of troops. If you have a soldier who is shot down, you want to be able to hibernate them on site until you can get a team in to rescue them." 01/21/06 - Phenomenon of synchronism: mere coincidence or God's will? Strange things happen to everyone. Science can not interpret them in a logic or reasonable way, and therefore they are regarded as mere coincidences. For example, an old friend calls you up a minute after a distant recollection flashes through your head. Or somebody pays you back when you desperately need money. There are other coincidences that are a lot complex and even more astounding, they make you think about the inexplicable and the divine intervention. Who do they happened contrary to all laws of nature and science? Two outstanding scientists came up with the term 'Synchronicity' independent of the other. Nobel Prize winners in physics Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustaf Jung, a famous psychologist and psychoanalyst, arrived at the conclusion that simultaneous occurrence of causally unrelated events has meaning beyond mere coincidence. Those events may occur without any reason or respect to existing laws of nature. The laws of nature are not absolute, said the scientists while explaining their positions. Both Jung and Pauli maintained that relations between the events can be of fundamental meaning to man even though the belief is in contradiction to the fixed concepts of the universe and its principal laws. See Synchronicities & Coincidence 01/20/06 - Flying Saucers in the UK peak curiosity Mysterious flying saucers seen around the city have pricked the curiosity of secretive US defence officials. A group of dedicated space enthusiasts at GFS Projects Limited - which stands for Geoff's Flying Saucer - have been tinkering away with some alien designs in their own Area 51 in Saxon Road. For six years, Geoff Hatton and his team have worked tirelessly to take a giant leap into the unknown and created six realistic flying saucers. And now the uniqueness of the machines, which can take off vertically, fly, hover and land, has attracted the imagination of the American officials who went to see if the truth really was out there. Like a scene from the X-Files, the men in black flew across the Atlantic to check out the UFOs and see if the truth really is out there. But what the US officials want with the mysterious machines remains Top Secret. Geoff, of Eastfield Road, Peterborough, who was celebrating his 67th birthday on Monday, said: "It is extremely pleasing to have anything you do recognised by other people. "It was an exploratory meeting set up by a third party. After the meetings I had the impression they were pleased with what they had seen. We will just have to wait. I have no idea what they want them for." The hub-cap like machines look like they've been lifted from a '50s B-movie. They glide gracefully through the air using the Coanda principle, which involves jets of nozzled air being attracted to a nearby curved surfaces. To date, all the prototypes have been battery-powered, but GFS believe larger versions could have proper internal combustion engines. Geoff, who first came up with the plans for the saucers while sitting on his dining room table, added: "We are the only company in the world doing this sort of thing. The future is shaping up to be very promising indeed." Shane Miller (24), of Parnwell, Peterborough, is the youngest member of the team. He said: "When I first saw the saucers when I started last August, I simply said 'wow'." The team are not relying on the outcome of the visit from the American government - as the company is constantly dreaming up new ways of marketing the saucers. They believe the flying saucers can be adapted as toys, to aid mountain rescues, land mine detection and even as a state-of-the-art scarecrows. To set the ball rolling, the company secured a £43,000 SMART grant from the Department of Trade and Industry and equity funding from a group of investors. The saucers range from 10ins to three feet in diameter. • For more information, visit www.gfsprojects.co.uk Our UAV is capable of vertical take off, fully controlled flight, hovering and landing on a specified point. By using the Coanda principle to create lift, it has very little downwash and is aerodynamically stable. To date all prototypes have been battery powered, but the design is scalable and the larger versions will have internal combustion engines. GFS Projects Limited was formed in 2002 to design, develop and market a new form of flying. Our Unmanned Aerial vehicle (UAV) is based on the ideas and research of Geoff Hatton - the inventor. The company secured a SMART grant from the Department of Trade & Industry and equity funding from a group of investors. GFS7 took to the air in April 2005 and completed a figure of eight flight, inside the development building. Four patent applications covering the unique aspects of the design have been filed. 01/20/06 - Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline Iceland has energy to spare, and the small country has found a cutting-edge way to reduce its oil dependency. Volcanoes formed the island nation out of ash and lava, and molten rock heats huge underground lakes to the boiling point. The hot water - energy sizzling beneath the surface - is piped into cities and stored in giant tanks, providing heat for homes, businesses and even swimming pools. The volcanoes melted ice, which formed rivers. The water runs through turbines, providing virtually all the country's electricity. Iceland wants to make a full conversion and plans to modify its cars, buses and trucks to run on renewable energy - with no dependence on oil. Iceland has already started by turning water into fuel - hydrogen fuel. Here's how it works: Electrodes split the water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Hydrogen electrons pass through a conductor that creates the current to power an electric engine. Hydrogen fuel now costs two to three times as much as gasoline, but gets up to three times the mileage of gas, making the overall cost about the same. As an added benefit, there are no carbon emissions - only water vapor. In the capital, Reykjavik, they are already testing three hydrogen-powered electric buses. The drivers are impressed. "I like these buses better because with hydrogen you get no pollution," said bus driver Rognvaldur Jonatanlson. By the middle of this century, all Icelanders will be required to run their cars only on hydrogen fuel, meaning no more gasoline. "If we make hydrogen and use that as a fuel for transportation then we can run the whole society on our own local renewable energy sources," said Marie Maack of the Hydrogen Research Project. Icelanders say they're committed to showing the world that by making fuel from water, it is possible to kick the oil habit. (via impactlab.com) 01/20/06 - The Butterfly Effect - Deterministic Chaos on the Nanoscale Mechanical engineers at Purdue University have proven that the same sort of "deterministic chaos" behind the baffling uncertainties of the stock market and long-term weather conditions also interferes with measurements taken with a commonly used scientific instrument. Atomic-force microscopes work by passing a tiny cone-shaped tip close to the surface of an object, tracing its features. The tip is attached to a device called a "microcantilever," which resembles a diving board with the tip attached to the free end. The cantilever is caused to oscillate by the vibrating motion of a "piezoelectric crystal" that moves when voltage is applied to it. The force exerted by the crystal can be adjusted to increase and decrease how much the tip oscillates. The greater the vibration, the larger the "amplitude," or how far the tip moves each time it swings toward and away from the surface of the object being measured. As the cantilever tip oscillates up and down, its motion is influenced by forces, including van der Waals' forces, which exist between atoms. The van der Waals' forces become stronger as the tip gets closer to the surface. Information about the strength of the atomic force reveals how close the tip is to the surface of the object being studied. Researchers use this atomic-force information to position the tip extremely close to the surface. Then, as the tip scans the surface and encounters changes in contour, the entire microcantilever assembly tracks up and down to keep the tip's oscillating amplitude the same. The changing position of the cantilever is carefully monitored to reveal the topology of the surface of the object, yielding an image. This method for using the microscope is commonly referred to by researchers as the "tapping mode." "For the method to work properly and yield accurate images that show features on the scale of nanometers, the microcantilever tip should always oscillate the same way, nice and smoothly like clockwork," Raman said. "But sometimes the tip suddenly begins oscillating chaotically, producing errors in the measurements." Until now, researchers did not know why under certain operating conditions nanoscale features appear "noisy" and erroneous. Hu increased the driving force of the piezoelectric crystal while the microscope was operating in the tapping mode to deliberately produce chaos. The research showed that increasing the amplitude of the microcanteliver by a specific amount resulted abruptly in chaotic oscillations. When Hu increased the amplitude again slightly, the oscillations returned to a normal, smooth motion. Increasing the amplitude further again resulted in chaos. The experiments were conducted under various conditions, including inside an airtight chamber filled with pure nitrogen, eliminating water vapor, which could taint the results. Another important revelation, Raman said, is that the form of chaos observed is in the "deterministic" world of ordinary physics that governs everything from a baseball's trajectory to the motion of planets. Researchers had thought the microscope's sudden aberrant behavior might be caused by exotic forces associated with quantum mechanics, which describes the abstract inner workings of atoms. Chaos usually is observed in large-scale phenomena, such as long-term weather conditions, the motion of objects in the solar system, sudden changes in the heart's rhythm or the operation of mechanical systems such as washing machines. In such cases, the chaotic behavior is caused by small, seemingly unrelated random events. This randomness has been described as the "butterfly effect," or the idea that small variations in the initial conditions of a system result in large changes in the long-term behavior of the system. Tiny changes in the atmosphere caused by a butterfly flapping its wings could ultimately combine with other random events to produce severe weather a year later thousands of miles away. "You very rarely see chaos and nanotechnology mentioned together, but it's nice to know that chaos is not just something that happens on the large scale," Raman said. 01/20/06 - The Coming Collapse of Income Tax Within the next ten years the income tax system in the United States will be dismantled. A number of emerging new forces coupled with the universal dislike of the system will soon gain enough of a toehold to cause it to collapse. State income tax systems will be dismantled either shortly thereafter or at the same time. It is a system that has mushroomed out of control, and few will morn its parting. A recent poll by the DaVinci Institute showed that 41% of the population does not think income tax will ever go away....even in 100 years. Many people have resigned themselves to the inevitability of the income tax system. Most grumble and complain about it feeling that the sheer inertia of this giant bureaucracy is like an unstoppable force of nature. However, change does not happen because everyone gets together first and decides a change is going to happen. Momentum will build quickly around a single event or thought leader. When the general public senses that the end is near, an overwhelming flood of support will rapidly hasten its demise. 01/20/06 - Google in battle over privacy (When do people say ENOUGH to this paranoid idiocy? Stand up to them Google!!! - JWD) Google has rejected the Bush administration's demand to access what millions of people have been looking up on the internet's leading search engine - a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance. Mountain View, California-based Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records. In court papers, the Bush administration depicts the information as vital in its effort to restore online child protection laws that have been struck down by the US Supreme Court. Yahoo, which runs the internet's second-most used search engine behind Google, confirmed that it had complied with a similar government subpoena. Although the government says it isn't seeking any data that ties personal information to search requests, the subpoena still raises serious privacy concerns, experts said. For instance, it's not unusual for search requests to include names, medical profiles or Social Security information, said Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum. Every other search engine served similar subpoenas by the Bush administration has complied so far, according to court documents. The co-operating search engines were not identified. 01/20/06 - Aptera - the Diesel-Electric Hypercar Accelerated Composites, a startup in Carlsbad, California, is now assembling a new diesel-electric hybrid of its own design, made of high-end composite materials and using supercapacitors instead of batteries. Like the Honda Insight, it will seat two. Accelerated Composites expects the vehicle, called the Aptera, to cost around $20,000. Estimate mileage: 330 miles per gallon at 65 miles per hour. That's not a typo. The combination of super-streamlined shape, ultra low-weight materials, and high-output supercapacitors gives the design incredible efficiency. And because the composite production process developed by Accelerated Composites is faster and more efficient than previous methods, the overall cost of the vehicle can be startlingly low. 01/20/06 - Growing crops to cope with climate change Scientists at the UK's leading plant science centre have uncovered a gene that could help to develop new varieties of crop that will be able to cope with the changing world climate. Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have identified the gene in barley that controls how the plant responds to seasonal changes in the length of the day. This is key to understanding how plants have adapted their flowering behaviour to different environments. Dr David Laurie, the research leader at the John Innes Centre, said, "Growing crops will become more difficult as the global climate changes. The varieties of crops grown in the UK are suited to the soil, seasons and traditional cool, wet summers. Later flowering in barley means it has a longer growing period to amass yield. If British summers get hotter and drier we will need types of wheat, barley and other crops that flower earlier, like Mediterranean varieties, to beat summer droughts. However, new varieties will need to be adapted in all other ways to UK conditions." With the new knowledge about the workings of barley researchers and plant breeders will find it easier to select variations that will thrive in the UK environment but will also flower earlier, coping with hotter summers. Dr Laurie commented, "Although our research has been on barley we know from observation that other crops show similar variation in the way they respond to the lengthening of the day in springtime. We are confident that we will find equivalent genes in other key crops." Professor Julia Goodfellow, BBSRC Chief Executive, said, "Climate change presents a huge challenge for the world. Although every effort must be concentrated on reducing the impact of human activity on the environment, science should also be answering questions about how we can live in an altered climate. Research such as this helps to present answers to some of these problems." 01/20/06 - Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming The U.S. is failing to take the lead in confronting global warming, a "dishonest" and "self-destructive" approach that only worsens the problem, say former federal environmental chiefs. Six former EPA heads _ five Republicans and one Democrat _ who accused the Bush administrations of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. Train said slowing the growth of "greenhouse" gases isn't enough. "To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive" said Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Ruckelshaus was the first EPA chief. All of the former administrators and the current one, Stephen Johnson, raised their hands when the event moderator asked whether they believe global warming is a real problem and again when he asked if humans bear significant blame. "You'd need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we've handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we're putting into the air, isn't exacerbating what is probably a natural trend," she said. "But this is worse, and it's getting worse." 01/20/06 - Kublai Khans' Navy preceded Zheng He who preceded Columbus? The chief proponent of the theory that famed Muslim sailor Zheng He first mapped America now says the Mongol king Kublai Khan probably had the Americas explored even earlier, in the 13th Century. The Chinese map -- reportedly a 1763 copy of "A General Chart of the Integrated World" from 1418 -- puts China's knowledge of the Americas several years before historian Gavin Menzies' 1421 theory. This, says Menzies, is because Kublai Khan's navy was there first. Kublai Khan ruled the largest Mongol empire in history, from 1260 to 1294. Born into a Khanate that already stretched from Poland to Baghdad on its western edge, Kublai Khan brought all of China into the empire. Remembered as a great administrator who allowed plenty of self-rule by the Chinese and showed remarkable tolerance for religions including Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism and even Christianity, Kublai Khan's eventual downfall was a disastrous naval invasion of Japan in 1281. But Menzies claims that Khan's fleets from China were making regular journeys to the Americas before then, and that Zheng He's navy actually used maps from the Kublai Khan era. The most persuasive evidence for extensive Chinese exploration of North America is an incredible archeological site on Canada's Cape Breton island. According to the architect who discovered the massive site, it is nothing less than the ruins of a Chinese naval city built on the island more than a century before Europeans discovered it. 01/20/06 - Low-level heat wrap reduces low back pain & improves mobility The use of continuous low-level heat wrap therapy (CLHT) significantly reduces acute low back pain and related disability and improves occupational performance of employees in physically demanding jobs suffering from acute low back pain, according to a Johns Hopkins study published in the December 2005 issue of The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In the study, 43 patients (age 20 to 62) who visited an occupational injury clinic for low back pain were randomized into one of two intervention arms: 18 patients received education regarding back therapy and pain management alone, while 25 received education regarding back therapy and pain management combined with three consecutive days of CLHT for eight hours continuously (ThermaCare® HeatWraps). The heat wrap is a wrap worn over the lower back, under the clothing. It uses an exothermic chemical reaction to deliver a low level of topical heat for at least eight continuous hours. Patients on CLHT showed a 52 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 43 percent improvement in pain relief within one day of treatment as compared to the reference group. Both pain intensity reduction and pain relief were maintained for the three days of treatment with CLHT at 60 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Additionally, the benefits of pain relief and pain intensity reduction were maintained at a significant level in the CLHT patients in a follow-up period on day 4 and day 14 after treatment was discontinued. Low back pain is one of the most common and therefore costly medical problems in industrialized countries, according to Bernacki, who also directs the Hopkins Department of Health, Safety and the Environment. Approximately 50 percent of working-age people in the United States are reported to suffer from acute low back pain every year, and it is estimated that the annual productivity loss from this condition totals between $20 and $50 billion. 01/19/06 - Levitating wirelessly powered lightbulb (This is interesting because of possible use as a hoax for free energy demonstrations as with the Steven Marks device. - JWD) Lightbulb explores two phenomena I find interesting, the stabilization of unstable systems using feedback, and wireless power transmission. Feedback systems often levitate objects, stabilize inverted pendulums, and the like. Wireless power transmission has been around since Tesla's invention a century ago, although it is still not widely utilized. I wanted to explore these effects together. Lightbulb uses a special bulb, inside which magnets and circuitry are hidden. Using a magnetic hall effect sensor, an electromagnet, and a [modified] PD feedback system, it floats a lightbulb stably in the air, while power is transmitted wirelessly from the base of the sculpture into the bulb. LEDs in the bulb rectify this AC power and convert it to light. The power transfer functions very similarly to how radio station tuning works and requires a well tuned matched pair of resonant windings, but allows power transmission through the air. 01/19/06 - China to build large-sized garbage power plant in eastern region The construction of a large-sized garbage power plant, capable of generating 200 million kwh of electricity per year, has started in Linyi City, east China's Shandong Province. With an investment of 238 million yuan (30 million US dollars), the project will be able to process 400 tons garbage and produce 75 tons of steam per hour as part of the city's heating sources in the winter. The yearly garbage processing ability will reach 300,000 tons after its completion in October, said Xu Qinxiang, director of the project. By the time the project is completed, the city will stop the traditional garbage-burying operation. Instead, garbage will be collected by sanitation workers and sent to the power plant, where the useful materials such as metal and plastic will be recycled, while the remaining will be leavened and dehydrated before it can be burned. Heat produced from burning two tons of garbage equals that of one ton of coal and the after-burning residua can be used to make brick, cement and other building materials, according to Xu. 01/19/06 - Wacky Uses For Popular Products Here's a Web site that lists hundreds of little-known uses for some well-known products. WackyUses.com has uses for everything from lip balm to Coca-Cola. If you have a can of WD-40 in your garage -- try using it to remove oil spots from your driveway. Run out of paper towels? Try using coffee filters to clean your windows. They are lint-free, so they'll leave your windows sparkling. To stop your shaving cans from rusting in the shower -- try painting the bottom of the cans with clear nail polish. To take a look at some other products, just click on the "wacky uses" link for a list of items. The site also has a section with tips on how to get candle wax out of a carpet and how to get bugs off the hood of your car. 01/19/06 - Breakthrough power unit for new-generation carrier rocket China's self-developed 50-ton LOX/LH2 (liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen) engine passed a 200-second hot-firing Sunday in Beijing, marking a significant progress China made in developing the sample of that type of engine. The engine, undertaken by the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, has the biggest propulsion among those propelled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It incorporates in itself hi-tech, high performance, high liability, low cost, non-toxic and non-pollution. The engine and the 120-ton LOX/kerosene engine, both basic propulsion units for China's new-generation carrier rockets, will play an important role in the nation's endeavor in satellite technology, deep-space exploration and manned space flight. 01/19/06 - U.S. Patent Office May Shift Burdens to Patent Applicants On January 3, 2006, public comment was invited by the U.S. Patent Office on proposed rules that would limit the extent of examination of patent applications. In the proposal for preliminary examination to limit the number of claims examined, all claims known as “independent claims” would be examined, but the number of claims known as “dependent claims” to be examined would be limited to a total of 10. If an applicant wishes to have more than 10 dependent claims initially examined, the applicant would have to provide an “examination support document” providing reasons why more than 10 dependent claims should be initially examined. 01/19/06 - Small, speedy, cheap jets may transform flying Adam Aircraft's A700 jet seats eight people and sells for $2 million. Big airlines worry 'SUVs with wings' will cause traffic jams in the air. Called "microjets" or "very light jets," they've been likened to SUVs with wings. With two engines and seating capacity for five or six people, they cost half as much as the most inexpensive business jet now in service. Three thousand of the little jets are already on order at three manufacturers. Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Eclipse Aviation has 2,350 on back order and expects to receive Federal Aviation Administration certification for its E500 by June. The first E500 - which takes less than five days to make - will be delivered 10 days later. Supporters of the little jets predict they'll go to out-of-the way sites, in the vast empty skies between more than 5,000 small, underused airports. "We're going to offer service where the airlines don't," Raburn said. The FAA predicts at least 4,500 VLJs will be in service 10 years from now, though Blakey concedes that's a conservative estimate. NASA projects 20,000 in 2010. 01/19/06 - Inhaling salt mist helps cystic fibrosis (Friends in Dallas recommend using an ultrasonic mister unit to create vapors of hydrogen peroxide, these are inhaled and claimed to produce amazing results for colds, flu or respiratory conditions. - JWD) Inhaling the mists of salt water can reduce the pus and infection that fills the airways of cystic fibrosis sufferers, although side effects include a nasty coughing fit and a harsh taste. 01/19/06 - 3 Percent Fee On Cell Phones Started 107 Years Ago One of the charges is a 3 percent fee on every cell phone bill in America. The origin of the tax predates the invention of the cellular phone by nearly a century. Annie Brinkman and her friend, Stacey Lemle, don't know it, but every time they use their cell phones, they are supporting the war effort -- the Spanish-American War. The 1898 war involved Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. The fee began as a luxury tax on phones at the turn of the 19th Century. And we're all still paying for it today. Phone bills don?t specify that the tax originates from the Spanish-American War. It is labeled as the federal excise tax, which amounts to 3 percent of every monthly bill. "When you say it's a federal excise tax, you know, most of the time, oh it's the federal excise tax," said Laura Merritt of Verizon Wireless. "And that's just understood that it's a tax you pay. Where exactly those funds go is something that's a mystery to all of us." 01/18/06 - New FireFly super Battery uses Carbon Foam Current Collectors The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued patent number 6,979,513, titled, "Battery Including Carbon Foam Current Collectors." The patent was awarded on December 27, 2005. The invention is a battery comprised of an electrical current collector constructed of carbon or lightweight graphite foam. This foam exhibits a sizeable increase in surface area for chemical reactions to take place and eliminates the need for heavy lead plates found in traditional batteries. The graphite material resists corrosion and sulfation build-up, thus contributing to longer battery life and is lighter in weight than today's lead acid batteries. Kelley was assigned the problem of pursuing increased performance for lead-acid batteries used by Caterpillar's product groups. The challenges that Kelley faced were manifold. First among them were how to address the main performance challenges of a lead acid battery: -- Short life caused by corrosion (of the battery's positive plate) and sulfation (of the battery's negative plate). -- Removing the bottlenecks to realizing the theoretical power and capacity of the lead acid chemistry itself. "By removing the corrosive heavy lead grids and replacing them with a graphite foam, Kurt Kelley's invention has helped unleash the innate power of lead acid chemistry," adds Williams. "It introduces a material that doesn't corrode and enables the weights and sizes of lead acid batteries to be reduced significantly." FireFly Batteries 01/18/06 - British scientist calls US climate sceptics 'loonies' The chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sir John Lawton, has called climate change deniers in the US "loonies", and says global warming is to blame for the increasingly strong hurricanes being spawned in the Atlantic. In an interview with The Independent, Lawton said that global warming is "very likely" the cause of increasingly intense hurricanes, in line with computer simulations. Lawton said that with two such large storms hitting the Gulf coast in such quick succession, the Bush administration should re-evaluate its position on climate change. He said if the "extreme sceptics" in the US could be persuaded to change their minds, that would be "a valuable outcome [of] a horrible mess". "There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer." Sir John says that it is fair to conclude that an increasingly warm climate, caused at least in part by human activity, is also warming the oceans' surfaces, and increasing the violence of hurricanes. "Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun," he said. 01/18/06 - Pre-Cooling to save energy Engineers have developed a method for "precooling" small office buildings and reducing energy consumption during times of peak demand, promising not only to save money but also to help prevent power failures during hot summer days. The method has been shown to reduce the cooling-related demand for electricity in small office buildings by 30 percent during hours of peak power consumption in California's sweltering summer climate. Small office buildings represent the majority of commercial structures, so reducing the electricity demand for air conditioning in those buildings could help California prevent power-capacity problems like those that plagued the state in 2000 and 2001, said James Braun, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering. The method works by running air conditioning at cooler-than-normal settings in the morning and then raising the thermostat to warmer-than-normal settings in the afternoon, when energy consumption escalates during hot summer months. Because the building's mass has been cooled down, it does not require as much energy for air conditioning during the hottest time of day, when electricity is most expensive and in highest demand. Precooling structures so that it takes less power to cool buildings during times of peak demand is not a new concept. But researchers have developed a "control algorithm," or software that determines the best strategy for changing thermostat settings in a given building in order to save the most money. Research has shown that using a thermal mass control strategy improperly can actually result in higher energy costs. Factors such as a building's construction, the design of its air-conditioning system, number of windows, whether the floors are carpeted, and other information must be carefully considered to determine how to best use the method. "The idea is to set the thermostat at 70 degrees Fahrenheit for the morning hours, and then you start adjusting that temperature upwards with a maximum temperature of around 78 during the afternoon hours, " Braun said. "When the thermostat settings are adjusted in an optimal fashion, the result is a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in peak electrical demand for air conditioning. "If you couple this reduction in demand with a utility rate structure that charges more during critical peak periods, utility costs will drop. Without such a change in peak rates, though, the actual impact on operating costs is relatively small, with about $50 in annual savings per 1,000 square feet of building space. 01/18/06 - Space Quantum Research offering stock via NASDAQ English speaking persons can enter the website at http://www.rqm.ch/content.htm. The focus of the Rapperswil group for the past couple of years appears to have been directed at developing efficient DC-to-AC power conversion electronics for use with alternative energy sources, such as solar energy. They are now apparently ready to apply this expertise to their core patented energy technology, which has something to do with phonon-mitigated direct nuclear-to-electrical energy conversion within a deuterated piezoelectric crystal. To quote from the website: "The effect of the Deuterium is catalytic, no expenditure, no wear and tear, no pollution as with fuel cells. It will be possible to implement this new development in nanotechnology, such as with microscopic gates, e.g. the space-quantum energy is tapped in the nanorange." Electrodynacat's predictions that free energy will be nanotechnology based could well be realized in the work being done by the Rapperswil group. (via zpenergy.com) 01/18/06 - Portable Vein Finder Would Reduce Errant Needle Pricks Jim Larsen, a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was in the hospital once and required several blood tests. All the poking caused swelling and inflammation in his arms, which made it increasingly difficult for nurses to find his veins. "It often took seven or eight tries," Larsen recalls. "It wasn't long before I felt like a pin cushion." The vein finder works by using the Doppler effect, a well-known phenomenon also employed to detect rainfall and even find extrasolar planets. The Doppler effect is what makes an ambulance siren change pitch when it passes you. Sound waves are compressed when the ambulance is coming at you, and they are stretched when it drives away, changing the sound's pitch. By applying a narrowly focused beam of ultrasonic energy at a certain angle, the vein finder uses the Doppler effect to detect moving blood and determines the direction of flow. Arteries carry blood away from the heart, and veins carry it back. Like a stud finder used by contractors, the vein finder beeps when it detects a target. A nurse would then activate an attached needle. The researchers envision the thing ultimately being the size of a fat fountain pen that could be used by ambulance services and the military. But it would be welcome in any hospital or nursing home. Finding veins is especially difficult in dehydrated patients because their blood vessels lack normal volume, said Connell Reynolds, founder of Reynolds Medical Inc., a medical device manufacturer that is sponsoring the work. "Similarly, because cardiac patients' hearts aren't pumping properly, their veins are hard to locate," Reynolds said. "It's also difficult to find veins in obese people and young children because their vessels are covered by layers of fat." 01/18/06 - 3 most powerful hurricanes of 2005 filled with mysterious lightning Using NASA's ER-2 aircraft, a research version of the famous U-2 spy plane, flying high above the storm, they noted frequent lightning in the cylindrical wall of clouds surrounding the hurricane's eye. Both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning were present, "a few flashes per minute," says Blakeslee. Indeed, the electric fields above Emily were among the strongest ever measured by the aircraft's sensors over any storm. "We observed steady fields in excess of 8 kilovolts per meter," says Blakeslee. "That is huge--comparable to the strongest fields we would expect to find over a large land-based 'mesoscale' thunderstorm." Rita and Katrina were not part of the campaign. Lightning in those storms was detected by means of long-distance sensors on the ground, not the ER-2, so less is known about their electric fields. Nevertheless, it is possible to note some similarities: (1) all three storms were powerful: Emily was a Category 4 storm, Rita and Katrina were Category 5; (2) all three were over water when their lightning was detected; and (3) in each case, the lightning was located around the eye-wall. Within thunderclouds, vertical winds cause ice crystals and water droplets (called "hydrometeors") to bump together. This "rubbing" causes the hydrometeors to become charged. Think of rubbing your socked feet across wool carpet--zap! It's the same principle. For reasons not fully understood, positive electric charge accumulates on smaller particles while negative charge clings to the larger ones. Winds and gravity separate the charged hydrometeors, producing an enormous electric field within the storm. This is the source of lightning. A hurricane's winds are mostly horizontal, not vertical. So the vertical churning that leads to lightning doesn't normally happen. It's tempting to think that, because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But Blakeslee says that this explanation is too simple. "Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning," he says. "There must be something else at work." 01/18/06 - Lots of flowers and trees, not enough birds and bees In biodiversity hot spots like tropical rainforests, a dearth of pollinators could be putting many species at risk of extinction, according to a new study that includes three University of Pittsburgh researchers. The finding is raising concerns that more may need to be done to protect the Earth's most biologically rich areas. As the number of birds, bees, and other pollen transporters declines around the world, competition for their attention is becoming increasingly fierce for plants that need their services for reproduction--to the point where species in the most fertile areas of the world are struggling for survival. "Pollinators are on the decline globally because of habitat loss and destruction, pesticide use, invasive species, and extinction of vertebrates," said Tia-Lynn Ashman, associate professor of biological sciences at Pitt. Ashman, Vamosi, and their colleagues reviewed more than 1,000 pollen limitation studies from around the world and found that, in areas where there is a great deal of plant diversity, including South American and Southeast Asian jungles and the rich shrubland of South Africa, plants suffer lower pollination and reproductive success. For some plant species, this reduction in fruit and seed production could push them towards extinction. "Wild plant species in biodiversity hotspots are an important world resource for the ecosystem services they provide, including medicine, food, nutrient cycling, and alternative resources for pollinators of domesticated crops," Ashman said. 01/18/06 - the Ghenghis Khan Effect Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who conquered most of Asia in the 13th century and has nearly 16 million descendants, said Dan Bradley. In a study in central Asia, scientists found 8 percent of men with the same Y chromosome. Subsequent studies found they shared the same chromosome as the dynasty linked to Genghis Khan. Scientists in Ireland may have found the country's most fertile male, with more than 3 million men worldwide among his offspring. The scientists, from Trinity College Dublin, have discovered that as many as one in twelve Irish men could be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland. Niall reportedly had 12 sons, many of whom became powerful Irish kings themselves. But because he lived in the 5th century, there have been doubts the king -- who is said to have brought the country's patron saint, Patrick, to Ireland -- even existed. "Before I would have said that characters like Niall were almost mythological, like King Arthur, but this actually puts flesh on the bones," Bradley said. When international databases were checked, the chromosome also turned up in roughly 2 percent of all male New Yorkers. 01/18/06 - Bachelor's Degree in Alternative-Energy at Canton College Canton College of Technology, in New York, is launching a new four-year degree in alternative and renewable energy in the fall of 2006. The New York state legislation that mandates the use of 25 percent renewable energy by 2013 will certainly open some doors. "The program will teach students about fuel cells, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and solar power and biofuels. Canton Tech already operates several environmentally friendly renewable energy sources, including the ability to make biodiesel fuel. A methane digester will also begin supplying natural gas to the campus from manure produced at a nearly farm this fall. The digester will capture the methane gas produced by the teRiele [sic] family farm's 600-plus cows and pipe it under Route 68 to furnaces on campus. The digester is expected to generate about 500 kilowatts of power." The college also wants to partner with Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown to offer an associate's degree in alternative energies there too. (via treehugger.com) 01/18/06 - Electrical birth control puts sperm to sleep Sava Bojovich, a doctor at a Russian sexology clinics, has discovered that a weak discharge passed through a scrotum makes a man sterile for a certain period of time. According to professor Bojovich, he hadn’t invented anything new. It had been known for a long time that electricity and heat lower the mobility of spermatozoa. “We just calculated the power of electric discharge that wouldn’t destroy the man’s reproductive function. By using electrodes we put sperm to sleep for no more than two weeks," the doctor said. Bojovich’s first patients are very happy with the result. They say the procedure is absolutely painless, it just tickles a little. When the doctor holds two wires to the scrotum and lets the electric current pass through the sensible organ, some patients may start laughing because of the tickling feeling. Professor Bojovich has already designed a new portable version of his invention. He hopes it could be promoted for sale. Men would thus be able to tickle their scrotums with current at home and forget about their partners' unwanted pregnancy whining. 01/18/06 - Maglev Elevators by 2008? Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corp. will employ so-called maglev technology -- capable of suspending objects in mid-air through the combination of magnetic attraction and repulsion -- to control the lifts, it said in a statement. The maglev elevators will be quieter and more comfortable and will travel 300 meters (984 feet) per minute -- not as fast as the company's conventional lifts that can move up to 1,010 meters (3,314 feet) a minute, Toshiba said. Maglev technology has already been used to develop high-speed trains. The only passenger-carrying maglev train in the world links Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China, to the city center at speeds of 430 kilometers (267 miles) per hour. 01/17/06 - Pumpable Hydride Slurry as safe hydrogen carrier Safe Hydrogen has developed a pumpable magnesium-hydride-based fuel that releases hydrogen as needed. A pumpable fuel rich in hydrogen would eliminate several key road blocks to wide spread adoption in transportation, including distribution infrastructure and storage safety and efficiency. The slurry, both before and after yielding the hydrogen, is not flammable, safe to handle, easy to store and can use current pumps and tanks used for diesel fuel, gasoline or water. The slurry is reacted with water to produce the hydrogen required. The metal hydroxide byproduct is captured and recycled. The slurry consists of a finely ground light-metal hydride, protected by mineral oil and suspended by dispersants to keep the particles from settling out of the suspension. The oil forms a protective coating around the hydride particles that slows the movement of water toward the particle. This protective coating allows the hydride to be safely handled and stored in the air without absorbing moisture from the air. It also slows the kinetics of the reaction allowing the development of reaction vessels to mix the hydride with water for releasing hydrogen. A prototype on-board hydrogen generator developed earlier by Safe Hydrogen consists of storage vessels for the hydride slurry and a small amount of water, pumps for both the slurry and the water, a mixing reactor, a heat exchanger, and a hydroxide storage tank. The reactor is a tube with an auger/mixer running through it. Hydride slurry and water are pumped into the reactor at one end, and moved and mixed by the auger/mixer. Excess water is evaporated, absorbing and carrying the heat of reaction out of the reactor with the hydrogen. Hydrogen and water vapor are separated from the hydroxide product in the head of the hydroxide tank. The water vapor is condensed in the heat exchanger. Condensed water is returned to the water circuit and hydrogen is delivered to the fuel cell. One unit of slurry, according to the company, carries the potential of generating twice as much volume of hydrogen (at about the same weight) as one unit of cryogenically cooled liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is a proven method of storing hydrogen, but it takes substantial energy to liquefy the hydrogen and there is continual boil off of hydrogen during storage. Slurry, on the other hand, is stored at normal temperature and normal pressure. 01/17/06 - Plants that act like Batteries Growing plants act like electric batteries, developing small electric potentials. These are measurable in only a few score millivolts at most. A millivolt is a thousandth of a volt. Ordinary house current is usually 110 volts; an automobile battery develops 6 volts. Touching the tip of the waterweed 'Chara' plant will call forth electrical changes in it. Another University of Texas investigator, S.S. Wilks, reported on electrical potentials in the first green shoot that comes from the sprouting oat seed. If the end of a scarlet runner bean stalk is cut off, and the buds farther down thus induced to start growth into branches, there is a decided decrease in the potential of the joints above such buds, W.S. Rehm of Chicago reported. The potential may even be reversed, from negative to positive. Even a mechanical push against a leaf will cause such an electrical change, at least momentarily. These bioelectrical potentials can be increased by applying an increase in the pressure of oxygen to which they are exposed, Dr. G. Marsh of the State University of Iowa reported. On onion root tips there is an increase of potential with increase of oxygen pressure, up to about 30 atmospheres, but beyond this point a decrease sets in. Similar results were obtained with a frog's skin, but the critical pressure in this case was 63 atmospheres. 01/17/06 - Robot car for cities of the future the MIT team started from scratch to come up with their own concept: a stackable, shareable, electric, two-passenger car. "Imagine a shopping cart - a vehicle that can stack - you can take the first vehicle out of a stack and off you go," says Mr Chin. "These stacks would be placed throughout the city. A good place would be outside a subway station or a bus line or an airport, places where there's a convergence of transportation lines and people." The precedent for this type of shared personal transport is demonstrated with bicycle-sharing schemes in European towns and the ZipCar and FlexCar projects on the east and west coasts of the US respectively. The MIT concept car is a complete re-think of vehicle technology. For a start, there is no engine, at least in the traditional sense. The power comes from devices called wheel robots. "These are self-contained wheel units that have electric motors inside," says Mr Chin. "The interesting thing is that the wheel can turn a full 360 degrees so you can have omni-directional wheel movements. You can rotate the car while you're moving, any direction can be front or back and you can do things like crabbing or translate sideways. It's almost like you imagine yourself driving a computer chair." The wheel robots, complete with their own suspension, remove the need for a drive shaft and even the engine block, freeing up designers to make new use of the space in the car. "Essentially the car will comprise four wheel-robots plus a customisable chassis," says Chin. "The frame can be built specifically for each customer." Chief safety features include responsive seats that do away with the need for seat belts and air bags: these are based around a spine at the back of the seat with a number of "fingers" to embrace a passenger and hold them in place if the car detects that it is involved in an accident. And the cabin would absorb the impacts of crashes using new materials. 01/17/06 - Shock produced Coherent light in THZ region Physicists at MIT and Livermore National Lab have discovered a new source of coherent radiation distinct from traditional lasers and free-electron lasers; they propose to build a device in which coherent photons are produced by sending shock waves through a crystal. The result would be coherent light resembling the radiation issuing from a laser; but the mechanism of light production would not be stimulated emission, as it is in a laser, but rather the concerted motion of row after row of atoms in the target crystal. The passing shock front, set in motion by a projectile or laser blast, successively excites a huge density wave in the crystal; the atoms, returning to their original places in the matrix, emit light coherently, mostly in the Terahertz wavelength band. Although sources of coherent light in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum have developed in recent years, it is still a difficult task. 01/17/06 - Lovelock warns of need for preparation or risk a Mad Max world Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade (46.4 degree Fahrenheit) in temperate regions and 5 degrees (41 degree Fahrenheit) in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. 01/16/06 - Claim of new cavitation process for power generation A new technology is being developed by several parties in Russia, Korea and in Canada. The process appears to be new and unknown; however, other scientists have suggested it might be related to LENR and to cold fusion. The basic claim by this group is that it is possible to create excess power from a mechanical cavitation process that forces machine oil through a nozzle into a confined space that directly creates large amounts of electricity through cavitation. (via zpenergy.com) 01/16/06 - Middle Aged at 500 In 400 years, people will live to be 1,000. Michael R. Rose knows his prediction sounds ridiculous. To most people, it probably seems unbelievable. But, after working on aging for 30 years, the University of California-Irvine professor and scientist says we'll be playing golf in our 900s. He says aging is not what most people think it is. It's not wear and tear. We've evolved to have robust bodies in youth, able to survive and breed. Natural selection cares less as we grow older. Rose started a secret experiment. He only let his fruit flies reproduce at old ages. The idea: if you delay reproduction in several generations of flies, natural selection stays stronger later in life. Reproduction was like a timer for aging, and Rose was pushing it back. On a beautiful, sunny day in 1979, Rose sat on a bench, analyzing data by hand. He plotted his results into his lab book. They floored him. He walked up one floor to his adviser's office. "You have to look at this," Rose says. The flies evolved over many generations to live longer. Aging could be postponed. It's not about breeding people or having sex later in life. Women who delay having children would have to wait centuries before their descendants lived longer. He wants to use his knowledge to find drugs that slow intruders that stop life, like cancer or Alzheimer's. 01/16/06 - Using Controlled Gravitation for Terrorism Until experimental claims can be independently verified the speculation about modified gravity will continue. However, a recent revival of quantum theories related to gravity-like forces and interest in the work of early experimenters in gravity effects has produced a spate of renewed attention in recent months. Like any technology, the outcomes of modifying gravity can be positive or negative. What are the downsides and potential abuses of modG and how serious are they? Abuses include the potentially injurious or harmful outcomes during normal usage. They also include purposeful intent to the detriment of people and society. Terrorism - The action of gas centrifuges could be reproduced by an intensifying gravitational field. There is the possibility that intensified gravitational fields may be capable of producing enriched nuclear materials just as gas centrifuges are. If modG centrifuges are a less expensive and complex proposition than gas centrifuges then they may contribute to making even small nations potential members of the "nuclear club". Criminal Intent - As a means for theft, a modG device could easily be used to gain access to fenced-in areas such as open storage facilities and make off with any goods literally not chained down. Similarly, apartment/condo tower dwellers who currently feel safer on upper floors would have reason to feel less secure. Military - There are some unconventional applications that could benefit the military, such as modG devices developing short bursts of intense gravitational waves. These could be used to collapse bridges, buildings and other military targets as a means for denying an enemy cover. Such weaponry might be used in a "crumple effect" pulling structures in on themselves. Pursuit of modified gravity is considered by some to be no more a legitimate pursuit than that of perpetual motion. Dozens of alt. sci. (alternative science) Web sites discuss theories of antigravity as well as tapping into zero-point energy and the development of overunity devices outputting more energy than is seemingly input. Casual investigators will find many sites devoted to these topics including Tom Bearden's website, JNL Labs and Keelynet. 01/16/06 - US says not threatened by China securing Africa crude (Shades of Syriana! - JWD) China's moves to secure crude oil supplies in Africa for its growing economy does not threaten US energy needs, a senior US State Department official said on Friday. The US and China, which rank as the No.1 and No.2 global consumers of oil and petroleum products, are both looking to Africa to help diversify their oil supplies. China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing is currently visiting six African nations to increase China's diplomatic and economic presence in a region where China already obtains about a third of its oil. “I don't think China seeking oil in Africa is a threat to the US' interests,” Jendayi Frazer, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said. Most of China's investment in Africa, however, is limited to oil producing countries, she said. “So one would hope that China's investment would be broader and that it would contribute not only to China's development and growth... but it would also contribute to Africa's growth and development,” Frazer said. On Thursday, Li said in Senegal that he did not plan to sign new energy deals on the trip. He stressed that “energy is part and parcel of (China's) overall co-operation with so many African nations.” 01/16/06 - Ginger for minimizing Chemotherapy side effects Ginger ale and ginger tea are long-time home remedies for nausea or stomach ache. Now, researchers are investigating whether ginger can help prevent similar symptoms in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy -- even after they've tried standard anti-nausea drugs. Previous research found that ginger helped control nausea related to motion sickness, post-operative recovery and pregnancy. There are three main ways that ginger seems to help in controlling nausea, Zick said. It's main constituent is a substance called gingerol, a strong free-radical molecule that acts as an antioxidant. Gingerol decreases oxidative products made in the digestive tract that can cause nausea. Ginger also causes blood vessels to dilate, which explains its warming effect, and it also blocks serotonin receptors in the stomach that cause nausea. Fresh ginger root is the most effective remedy, Zick said. She recommended buying fresh ginger and grinding or chopping it to add to foods. She noted that just because a food or drink has ginger in the name doesn't mean it actually contains any ginger. "People really need to be aware that there are a lot of products, especially ginger ales these days, that put in a synthetic form of ginger or hardly any real ginger. So if you really wanted the medicinal effect, you would have to make sure that the brand had actual ginger in it," Zick advised. 01/16/06 - Algae lining Smokestacks cuts pollution by 40% Bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a brick-and-glass 20-megawatt power plant behind MIT's campus are rows of fat, clear tubes, each with green algae soup simmering inside. Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide. After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation. One key is selecting an algae with a high oil density - about 50 percent of its weight. Because this kind of algae also grows so fast, it can produce 15,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Just 60 gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the major biodiesel crops today. A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic meters of flue gas per minute, an amount equal to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt power plant, Greenshift said in a statement. For his part, Berzin calculates that just one 1,000 megawatt power plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. That would require a 2,000-acre "farm" of algae-filled tubes near the power plant. There are nearly 1,000 power plants nationwide with enough space nearby for a few hundred to a few thousand acres to grow algae and make a good profit, he says. In 1990, Sheehan's NREL program calculated that just 15,000 square miles of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is more than eight times that size) could grow enough algae to replace nearly all of the nation's current diesel requirements. 01/16/06 - Create an e-annoyance, go to jail Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else. It even shields our right to do it anonymously. 01/16/06 - 'Energy Friend' offer in Italy Zero emission energy from renewable sources, and a series of free services to install solar power or heat cells: these are the main contents of Energia Amica, the offer that comes from the partnership of Enel Energia and Enel.si, marrying together savings and energy efficiency for small and medium sized businesses particularly sensitive to environmental protection. This is a basin of 10 thousand potential customers (tourism, services, sports facilities, artisans) to which Enel Energia will offer the supply, at competitive prices, of green energy, with Recs certification, and the chance of using the "100 percent green energy" label controlled by ReeF Onlus, on all its products. But even further, Energia Amica includes, indeed, a package of free services, from Enel, which range from checking whether the equipment can be installed, to an accurate profit estimate and not lastly, assistance with solar cells, in drafting the request to Grtn to have access to the incentives in the government's decree, to which has been added over recent days a second decree that broadens the incentivisable power from 100 to 300 MW. To all this, thanks to the agreement drawn up by Enel.si with il Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the plant investment can be paid off in instalments. Once installed the solar or light cells are installed by Enel.si, the offer includes a free check one year later to make sure the equipment is working right. 01/16/06 - The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax The study estimates that complying with the federal income tax code during 2005 cost U.S. taxpayers $265.1 billion (up from $134.2 billion in 1995 (in inflation-adjusted dollars)), or 22 cents per dollar of tax revenues collected (up from 15 cents per dollar of tax revenues collected in 1995). By 2015, compliance costs are projected to grow to $482.7 billion. 01/16/06 - Skyscraper produces more energy than it uses Plans for a remarkable 69-storey skyscraper that can produce more energy than it consumes and promises to set new standards for sustainable architecture have been unveiled. Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has designed the Pearl River Tower, a corporate headquarters planned for Guangzhou, China, that harvests wind and solar energy. Pearl River Tower's sculpted facade also directs wind to a pair of openings on the building's mechanical floors. The travelling winds push turbines which generate energy for the building's heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. 'The openings also relieve wind pressure on the face of the building,' said project architect Gordon Gill of SOM. Energy consumption is reduced by maximizing natural day-lighting, reducing solar gain in air conditioned spaces, retaining rainwater for gray-water usage and using the sun to heat the hot water supply. Stack venting, radiant slab cooling and caisson heat sinks work to chill the building. AC current is generated by solar collectors on the facade. 01/16/06 - Teen Hormones allow organ transplants Scientists are proposing to use the hormone which triggers puberty to make organ transplants safer. Transplant patients currently have to take drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of the organ. But a team from Massachusetts General Hospital hope to use the hormone to activate the thymus gland, which plays a key role in "priming" immune cells. Immunosuppressant drugs prevent the body rejecting a transplanted organ, but they increase the risk of infections and cancers. The US team are focusing on the thymus, a small organ beneath the breastbone, which prompts T cells in the immune system to attack foreign cells without harming the body's own tissue. Once children reach adolescence, the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen which are produced start to "stunt" the thymus - a process that continues throughout adulthood. David Sachs, who is leading the research, told the magazine: "It's big and juicy in childhood, but starts to get fatty and to wither away after puberty. "Although it keeps ticking over, it is never again as active in priming T cells." He suggests temporarily shutting down sex hormone activity using Lupron, a synthetic version of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH). GnRH is released from the hypothalamus in the brain to trigger puberty. The team have previously shown in tests on young pigs - at a stage of development similar to a 10-year-old child - that the animals can tolerate transplanted organs after just two weeks of immunosuppressive drug treatment. 01/16/06 - Tip the Pizza Guy (Some comic relief if you want to read 'truelife' stories. - JWD) 01/15/06 - Mexican Invention provides 95% Migraine Relief (This article is in the Health section of the Guadalajara Reporter for January 14-20, 2006 but is not yet online. - JWD) Two Guadalajara doctors have patented a machine they say cures migraines and some vision ailments. Doctor Hector Tostado Romo and Carlos Miramontes, are using electrical currents to regulate the entrance and exit of blood to the brain, which is thought to be the general cause of migraine headaches. Since 1998, the doctors say that more than 10,000 people from the US and abroad have visited their office, Clinica Medica Net, to cure their headaches and even some eye diseases related to the nervous system, such as macular degeneration. Patients come to the clinic for five 45-minute sessions within the span of 2 and 1/2 months. Electrical cables are taped to a patient's neck to help stimulate the blood in their glands and arteries. In the case of migraine headaches, the doctors believe the micro-electric stimulants alleviate the pain because they diminish the inflammation of blood vessels, which in turn relieves nearby pinched nerves. For vision-related diseases, like macular degeneration, the electrical currents are said to restimulate dormant neurotransmitters in the eye. Depending on the type of treatment, the final bill can be as much as $1,300US. The migraine headache clinic is located in the Jardines de la Cruz neighborhood of Guadalajara, at Islas Antillas 2263. To make an appointment, call 3811-4912. 01/15/06 - Americas' discoverer - Zheng WHO? Source of 1513 Piri Reis maps? (There has long been a question of the source of the Piri Reis maps from 1513, as you can see, this Zheng He could well be it! - JWD) A new map with a view of the world from 1418 shows the great Chinese Muslim sailor Zheng He explored the Americas nearly a century before Columbus. If it's the real thing -- and preliminary studies suggest it is -- the stunning map of the world proves Zheng He's massive Navy had successfully sailed the Earth's oceans and explored the coastlines of North and South America by 1418. Zheng He's remarkable 30 years of nautical adventure were well documented. Chinese books about his legendary seven voyages describe his fleets exploring lands that 15th Century Europeans didn't even know existed. "The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft," first published around 1418, appears to validate much of the map. The map itself is a 1763 copy of a 1418 map titled "A General Chart of the Integrated World." It clearly shows the land masses of the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The omissions include the British Isles, which appear as a French peninsula. And California is mapped as a massive island, a mistake that European cartographers would continue to believe until the mid-1700s. Zheng He's notations describe the natives of North America's Pacific coast: "The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists." The great explorer also describes Australia's native people: "The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists." Zheng He -- whose birth name was Ma Sanbao (or Ma He) and who also went by the Islamic/Iranian name Hajji Mahmud Shams -- led a life so fantastic that many scholars believe he was the real-life Muslim superhero Sinbad the Sailor. Born in the southwestern province of Yunnan and descended from Iranian royalty in Bukhara (today's Uzbekistan). His father and grandfather both made the Hajj to Mecca and fueled his interest in travel and adventure. "Zheng He is described in Chinese historical records as tall and heavy, with clear-cut features and long ear lobes; a stride like a tiger's and voice clear and vibrant," one biography says. "He was well liked and admired for his quick wit in argument." It is said Zheng He stood at least 7-feet tall. After Yunnan was captured by the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He was imprisoned and castrated by the invaders. But he soon became a high-ranking aide to the Emperor. As an admiral of the Imperial Navy, he led thousands of sailors on incredible journeys -- one voyage involved 400 ships and 27,000 sailors. 01/15/06 - Pill to forget bad memories Real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event like rape, may make the resulting memories less painful and intense. Some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a problem first recognized in Vietnam War veterans. Only 14 percent to 24 percent of trauma victims experience long-term PTSD, but sufferers have flashbacks and physical symptoms that make them feel as if they are reliving the trauma years after it occurred. Scientists think it happens because the brain goes haywire during and right after a strongly emotional event, pouring out stress hormones that help store these memories in a different way than normal ones are preserved, reports AP. 01/15/06 - China’s growth will require a total transformation of the world economy For several decades, it has been recognized that the United States with 5 percent of the world’s people consumes one third or more of its resources. That was true. It no longer is. China has now overtaken the United States in the consumption of most basic resources. Among the basic commodities - grain and meat in the food sector, oil and coal in the energy sector, and steel in the industrial sector - China now consumes more than the United States of each of these except for oil. It consumes nearly twice as much meat (67 million tons compared with 39 million tons) and more than twice as much steel (258 million to 104 million tons). These numbers are about total consumption. But what happens when the world’s most populous country reaches the U.S. consumption level per person? If China’s economy continues to expand at 8 percent a year, its income per person will reach the current U.S. level in 2031. If at that point China’s per capita resource consumption were the same as in the United States today, then its projected 1.45 billion people would consume the equivalent of two thirds of the current world grain harvest. China’s paper consumption would be double the world’s current production. There go the world’s forests. The western economic model - the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economy - is not going to work for China. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2031 is projected to have a population even larger than China’s. Nor will it work for the 3 billion other people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.” And in an increasingly integrated world economy, where all countries are competing for the same oil, grain, and steel, the existing economic model will not work for industrial countries either. Sustaining our early twenty-first century global civilization now depends on shifting to a renewable energy-based, reuse/recycle economy with a diversified transport system. 01/15/06 - Patent troll or producer? The evolution of intellectual property (This is a prime reason that the patent office should ONLY allow patents on DEMONSTRATED prototypes of the claimed invention, NOT JUST IDEAS dreamed up by anyone. - JWD) A growing number of companies that are lining up to capitalize on the murky world of intellectual property rights. The list includes well-funded idea shops where inventors dream up futuristic technologies. There are plenty of examples of patent holders targeting large corporations with infringement lawsuits, in addition to Research In Motion Ltd.'s four-year battle against tiny NTP Inc., which could see the BlackBerry maker pay US$500-million to US$1-billion in settlement money. In 2003, a court ordered Microsoft Corp. to pay Eolas Technologies Inc. US$560-million over a disputed Web Browser patent. Earlier this year, a tiny company called Freedom Wireless Ltd. successfully sued Boston Communications Group Inc. for US$128-million over the use of Freedom's patented prepaid-cellular concept. And in December, shares in money-losing Wi-Lan Technologies Ltd. of Calgary, which filed a patent infringement suit in 2004 against Cisco Systems Ltd., shot up after the Internet giant caved in and signed a deal to buy its patents for an undisclosed amount. "It's outrageous what these parasites are doing to lots of good companies," said Philip Swain, a Boston lawyer who defended Boston Communications in its patent infringement lawsuits and authored a letter to the court on RIM's behalf. "It's an immoral way to make money." Critics argue that patent trolls, or patent holders who threaten companies with costly court battles unless they're offered licensing fees, are a serious threat to legitimate businesses. Companies who do the costly grunt work of actually developing and marketing new technologies are being held ransom by tiny outfits whose only assets are "kooky and vague" patents, said Mr. Swain. And critics say the U.S. system is in dire need of reform, since overburdened officials are granting patents that should not have been considered in the first place. For instance, just last November, a patent was issued for an anti-gravity spaceship to an Indiana inventor, which defies the laws of physics and therefore the patent office's own rules. Lawyer Mr. Swain said firms such as Acacia are exploiting companies who would rather pay a small royalty rather than go to court, even over questionable patent claims. "The unfortunate part is that with these nuisance suits people are willing to pay to make them go away," he said. "If you're not producing your invention you're a troll." 01/15/06 - the Difference Between Inventorship and Authorship A patent application must properly identify the single inventive entity (a sole inventor or two or more joint inventors) that is responsible for the subject matter of all of the claims. While an easy concept to state, it often proves difficult to put into action. As described in the case law, an inventorship determination is “one of the muddiest concepts in the muddy metaphysics of the patent law.” Under the United States Standards for Inventorship, the inventive act comprises two separate phases: conception and reduction to practice. The conception of the invention consists in the complete performance of the mental part of the inventive act. All that remains to be accomplished in order to perfect the act or instrument belongs to the department of construction, not invention. It is therefore the formation in the mind of the inventor of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention as it is thereafter to be applied in practice that constitutes an available conception within the meaning of the patent law. The courts have indicated that conception is complete when the inventor has a specific, settled idea, a particular solution to the problem at hand, not just a general goal or research plan he hopes to pursue. The idea must be such that it would enable a person of ordinary skill in the art to convert the idea to tangible form without extensive research. That is, conception is complete when one of ordinary skill in the art could make or use the invention without undue experimentation. 01/14/06 - Robot Watch samples & analyzes blood for malaria (Now this is just TOO COOL! - JWD) A scientist in South Africa has invented a wristwatch that detects malaria parasites in the wearer by collecting blood samples automatically and giving a warning if the parasite is found. Developed by researcher Gervan Lubbe, the watch obtains blood samples with a microscopic needle that automatically penetrates the skin twice during the day and twice at night, reported the Independent online. An alarm sounds if the parasite count is above 50, before the first symptoms appear, it said. According to Lubbe, at that point an antidote in the form of tablets should be consumed and, within 48 hours, all traces of malaria are eliminated from the body. Malaria is the single biggest killer on the African continent, claiming close to three million lives a year. Traditionally when signs of malaria become apparent, the parasite count is at approximately 3,000, at which stage quinine (the malaria drug) needs to be administered "which is more dangerous than the parasite itself", he said. Lubbe's company Gervans Trading is now developing the device for millions of employees of a major mining group. With the wristwatch, each miner will walk through a scanner, similar to a metal detector, and the watch's radio frequency will transmit the wearer's information to a central computer. "My biggest concern is whether we'll be able to supply the world market," he said. Battery operated and water resistant, with durable rubber to withstand high-frequency vibrations, the watch's alarm rings every 35 days to remove the small metal sieve and wash the old blood away, it said. The watch will be available soon from travel agents and outdoor stores. 01/14/06 - Global Warming - the forgotten methane source Methane is the greenhouse gas which has the second greatest effect on climate, after carbon dioxide. The concentration of methane in the atmosphere has almost tripled in the last 150 years. Methane is best known as natural gas, currently an important energy source. Nonetheless, only part of the methane uptake in the atmosphere is due to industrial activities connected to energy production and use. More important for the increase of methane in the atmosphere is the increase in so-called "biogenic" sources, e.g., rice cultivation or domestic ruminants related to the rise in the world's population. Nowadays, methane in the atmosphere in fact is largely of biogenic origin. The largest anoxic sources of methane are wetlands and rice fields, as well as the digestion of ruminants and termites, waste disposal sites, and the gas produced by sewage treatment plants. According to previous estimates, these sources make up two-thirds of the 600 million tonnes worldwide annual methane production. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics have now discovered that plants themselves produce methane and emit it into the atmosphere, even in completely normal, oxygen-rich surroundings. The researchers made the surprising discovery during an investigation of which gases are emitted by dead and fresh leaves. Then, in the laboratory and in the wild, the scientists looked at the release of gases from living plants like maize and ryegrass. In this investigation, it turned out that living plants let out some 10 to 1000 times more methane than dead plant material. The researchers then were able to show that the rate of methane production grew drastically when the plants were exposed to the sun. In terms of total amount of production worldwide, the scientists' first guesses are between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year. That means that about 10 to 30 percent of present annual methane production comes from plants. 01/14/06 - 'Smart' Energy Device Gives Control Back to Homeowners About 300 volunteers on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, in Yakima and in Gresham, Ore., will test equipment that is expected to make the power grid more reliable, while offsetting huge investments in new transmission and distribution equipment, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said. Approximately 200 homes will receive real-time automated price information that will adjust energy use based on price. In addition, some customers will have computer chips embedded in their dryers and water heaters that can sense when the power transmission system is under stress and automatically turn off certain functions briefly until the grid can be stabilized by power operators. The technologies we're testing will turn today's appliances, which are as dumb as stones with regard to the power grid, into full partners in grid operations. said Rob Pratt, GridWise program manager at PNNL in Richland, Wash. Automated controls will adjust appliances and thermostats based on predetermined instructions from homeowners. The volunteers can choose to curtail or reduce energy use when prices are higher. 01/14/06 - Next Gen Hoverboards Hoverboards shown in the movie "Back to the Future 2", could support the weight of a human rider and hover him several inches above the ground on a mysterious cushion of invisible magnetic energy. They could even hover over water. During a televised interview with the movies director, Robert Zemeckis, he explained that "hoverboards float on magnetic energy". He also added, "they've been around for years, it's just that parent groups havn't let toy manufacturers make them. But we got our hands on some and put them in the movie". He was only joking of course but interesting enough, Mattel(whose logo appeared on the hoverboard props) soon found themselves overwhelmed with callers asking where they could buy one. Although they looked pretty convincing in the movie, the hoverboards were simply wooden props attached to the actors feet. To make the boards fly, the actors were suspended by cables. This personal hoverboard uses high performance hovercraft technology to lift a 250+lb rider 3 inches above the ground. A 6 horsepower 4-stroke gasoline engine spins a 5 bladed propeller to force air under the craft. Some air is diverted into a flexible skirt around the perimeter of the craft. The skirt is a type of air bag which helps to trap air under the craft to increase efficiency and hover higher. The higher it can hover, the better it can pass over obstacles. This is especially helpful over terrain that is not completely flat. There is a slight gap between the flexible skirt and the surface while its hovering. When hovering, the craft is virtually friction free and only requires a small thrust to move at high speeds. The craft hovers best over smooth flat surfaces. The hoverboard has been used over a variety of terrains such as pavement, dirt, grass, snow, ice and even shallow water. 01/14/06 - Stay close, and TV goes blind TV Magic Tool, is an alarm system placed on top of a TV set. It uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor to judge the distance between the TV set and the viewer. "Parents can pre-set the allowed distance between the TV and the viewer. When the child sits too close, the TV Magic Tool shouts 'My friend, you are sitting too close!' If the child does not move back, it will give the warning two more times before shutting off the TV," said Ouyang Ho, manager of Can-New Co. Ltd. that invented the gadget. Can-New has acquired a patent for the invention from Taiwan and China. The TV Magic Tool is being priced at $450. 01/14/06 - $8,184 TRILLION and climbing - When does it peak & collapse? America's foreign debt currently standing at $8,184 trillion will hit the debt ceiling as early as February-March 2006. The United States is heading to financial crisis at top speed. That is correct, America will default on its foreign debt sooner or later if the actual trends remain unchanged. Consequently, the whole dollar-based world (including savings in U.S. currency) may crumble. The United States has been on the verge of default for several times in the past. According to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow who forwarded a letter full of ominous predictions to 21 members of U.S. Congress. The letter was made public after the markets had been closed for Christmas and New Year's holidays - a rather appropriate precautionary move in terms of the international foreign exchange market, which is extremely sensitive to any sound produced by U.S. bureaucrats. 01/14/06 - SonoFusion claim redone to prove neutron production A collaboration of researchers from Purdue University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has detected neutrons, with energies typical of certain fusion reactions, emanating from a container of a specially prepared mixture of benzene and acetone that was exposed to high frequency sound waves. The sound waves produce tiny bubbles, which expand and then rapidly contract, generating high temperatures that the researchers believe lead to nuclear fusion reactions. The group announced similar results about two years ago, but faced ardent criticism over aspects of their experimental set up that could have created false positives in their data. In the earlier experiments they had used a beam of neutrons in an attempt to initiate the bubbles leading to sonofusion reactions. They claim that the new technique eliminates any confusion in identifying the neutrons they measured coming from the experiment as the products of sonofusion reactions. 01/13/06 - Wireless Brakes Stop Shopping Cart Theft (I love it when technology this simple can stop theft, just shows there are always new things to think up. - JWD) A grocery chain in near Penn State's campus called Fresh Grocer has installed wirelessly-controlled ELECTRONIC BRAKES from California-based Carttronics on shopping carts to reduce its normal loss of $3,000 per month in losses from stolen carts -- normally from college students who steal the carts out of laziness. When the cart passes over a burred antenna under the sidewalks surrounding the store's parking lot, the right-front wheel locks up. 01/13/06 - Toyota sued for hydrid technology An American company called Solomon Technologies has filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission against Toyota, saying the company's technology in the Prius and other hybrid cars INFRINGE on its patents. Worst case scenario for Prius would be an eventual ruling that barred the company from importing hybrids into the U.S. unless it reached a licensing agreement with Solomon. 01/13/06 - Quick vibrating Lockpick Key locks aren't that secure. Here's a simple recipe for converting a low-cost Oral B "Hummingbird" vibrating flosser into a vibrating lock-pick that can "pop most popular padlocks open in seconds with very little effort." 01/13/06 - Be Afraid, very, very Afraid The president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lu Yongxiang, said in Beijing Tuesday that "In the next 15 years, China will BREAK the international monopoly on strategic high technology to ensure national security, and China will also probe and innovate in key international edge-cutting technology." 01/13/06 - New Stamps showing no two snowflakes alike (Years ago another scientist proved this, that the patterns were formed like CYMATICS from ambient sonic waves in the area. This raises fascinating ideas for a snowblower machine with a sonic head that would cause the formation of MILLIONS of snowflakes IDENTICAL in form. Snowflakes are crystals so what could one do with this? - JWD) Snowflakes are nothing more than ice, but the forms a single flake can take are dizzyingly complex. A single crystal of ice is known as a snow crystal. And one or more snow crystals stuck together make a snowflake. There is, as you've heard, endless possibilities for how they stick together. By applying high voltage to a growing snow crystal in the lab, Libbrecht is able to analyze unique growth mechanisms, especially on very small scales. Snowflakes generally take one of seven basic forms. For example, stellar, or starlike, snowflakes usually grow six primary branches that support arms, which often develop thin plates of ice at the ends. Bitter-cold conditions create crystals with more facets. The most symmetrical snowflakes occur during light snowfalls when there is cold weather and little wind. If the air is warmer, crystals tend to stick together to form less symmetrical snowflakes, or they can take on a needlelike shape. In higher humidity, snowflakes may branch more, making them dendritic, or plantlike, in appearance. Falling from thousands of feet, these intricate ice crystals commonly begin as a piece of dust tumbling through the clouds. Gathering water molecules, they blossom into crystal forms in endlessly different patterns because of the constantly changing conditions of the atmosphere. 01/12/06 - Danish Researchers Discover New Hydrogen Storage Method If manufactured through clean means, hydrogen can be a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers worldwide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet that enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form. "Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank," says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU. The hydrogen tablet is safe and inexpensive, according to the researchers. You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a "shot" of ammonia and it is ready for use again. "We have a new solution to one of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel," said Jens Norskov. "And we need new energy technologies -- oil and gas will not last, and without energy, there is no modern society." 01/12/06 - Gasoline autos, compact discs & desktop computers headed for scrap heap The 2006 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, which gauges Americans' attitudes toward invention and innovation, found that a third of teens (33 percent) predict the demise of gasoline-powered cars by the year 2015. One in four teens (26 percent) expects compact discs to be obsolete within the next decade, and roughly another one in five (22 percent) predicts desktop computers will be a thing of the past. Teens are also optimistic that new inventions and innovations can solve important global issues, such as clean water (91 percent), world hunger (89 percent), disease eradication (88 percent), pollution reduction (84 percent) and energy conservation (82 percent). "Perhaps more than any preceding generation, today's young people are completely comfortable with rapid technological change," Lemelson-MIT Program Director Merton Flemings said. "The rate of innovation, as reflected in U.S. patent applications, has more than doubled during their lifetime." 01/12/06 - Invention radiates heat, awards Garrett Michael Yazzie pried a rusty radiator out a 1967 Pontiac in a landfill and invented a solar water heater to warm his mother's hogan. The contraption is a godsend in his community in northeastern Arizona on the Navajo Reservation, where temperatures dip to nearly 7 degrees. Garrett's home, an octagonal hogan connected to a trailer, lacks a central heating system but has electricity. Georgia, mother of the award-winning 14-year-old, is an employee at Pinon Middle School and calls him "my little inventor." Garrett's radiator turned solar water heater placed seventh in the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge in October. The project also snatched many first-place awards at the Arizona American Indian Science and Engineering Fair in Chandler. 01/12/06 - "Doomsday vault" to house world's seeds Norway is to build a "doomsday vault" in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels, New Scientist says. Built with Fort Knox-type security, the three-million-dollar vault will be designed to hold around two million seeds representing all known varieties of the world's crops. They are the precious food plants that have emerged from 10,000 years of selection by farmers. The facility "would essentially be built to last forever," according to a feasibility study. It will be built deep in permafrost in the side of a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) from the North Pole, the British weekly says in its next issue, out on Saturday. With walls of one-metre- (3.25-feet-) thick concrete, the seed bank will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. The facility will not be permanently manned but "the mountains are patrolled by polar bears," the report quotes Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an organisation that is promoting the project, as saying. To be preserved, the seeds must be kept below freezing point. Operators plan to replace the air inside the vault once a year at winter-time, but even if for some reason this becomes impossible, the permafrost will still keep the seeds viable. 01/12/06 - New York City sued over right to film in public An award-winning Indian documentary-maker sued New York City on Tuesday because police ordered him to stop filming in public in 2005 and held him for four hours, apparently suspecting he was plotting an attack. The New York Civil Liberties Union, acting as lawyers for filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, believes it is the first suit to challenge police restrictions on taking pictures in public following the September 11 attacks. It alleges Sharma's constitutional rights to free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure were violated. He was taking video with a hand-held camera in midtown Manhattan for a project about New York taxi drivers last May when he was stopped by a plainclothes officer, questioned on the sidewalk, taken in for more questioning and had his camera damaged, the federal lawsuit alleges. The civil liberties union said it was concerned about a growing but undetermined number of incidents where police stop people from taking pictures in public. The suit names Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, as well as the city, a police detective and five unidentified officers. 01/12/06 - Licensing Your Invention vs. Going Into Business During the invention process you'll encounter an early fork in the road: should you go into business for yourself, or should you try to license your idea to an already established company or manufacturer? There are many factors to consider when making this decision, and this column will help you evaluate the pros and cons of each. First it's important to understand these two options. When you go into business yourself, you'll handle every step of the process--from creating a working prototype to overseeing the manufacturing to devising a marketing plan to sales to distribution. When you license your invention, most of these steps are taken on by the licensee and you're paid a royalty on net sales of the completed invention. Running your own business demands a greater commitment and tolerance for risk with the promise of greater rewards, while licensing your idea minimizes your risk, and also your financial return. 01/12/06 - eScribe coming back (For those who value data and information, KeelyNet has a HUGE archive spanning several years at escribe.com which has been down for about 6 months or more, I lost count of the months. I found this note tonight while doing my searches for interesting, useful news. - JWD) eScribe.com will be ready soon! eScribe will be online again. Scott is changing out every component in the server to find the one that is defective. I'm the last remaining volunteer on the eScribe project, so it's taken a long time to find extra time to work on this. 11/23/05 01/11/06 - World's big polluters to fund clean energy projects (Here is your chance if you have a clean energy technology and need funding. - JWD) Six of the world's biggest polluters, led by the United States, will create a multi-million dollar fund to encourage mining and power industries to develop and use cleaner energy technologies to combat climate change. The Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate between the United States, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India will also form eight working groups with business and industry to develop clean-energy projects for the fund. Combined, the six countries account for half the world's greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil and their Sydney meeting is the first for their clean-energy partnership. "The private sector as well as governments are going to sit down together and try to work out solutions to some of these problems," said Downer. "As they work out some of these solutions then they will come back to governments with those recommendations and we will have to have a look and see what needs to be funded." 01/11/06 - Solar Cell prices going up due to polysilicon shortage Prices for polysilicon are expected to see further increases this year and next amid ongoing shortages for the materials, warned an analyst. “The rapid increase in solar cell production, and rising IC unit volumes, triggered a polysilicon shortage, [are] forcing solar cell manufacturers to pay significantly higher prices to secure silicon supply,” said Jesse Pichel, an analyst with Piper Jaffray Inc., an investment banking firm. “The contract price of polysilicon has soared 80 percent in the last 18 months to $60/kg, and we anticipate further increases to $80/kg in 2006 and more in 2007,” he said in a new report. Polysilicon contracts are sold out through 2007; spot prices for these materials recently reached $140/kg, he added. Leading polysilicon vendors cannot keep up with huge OEM demand and are reportedly sold out of these materials for the next two to three years, according to industry sources. Polysilicon, a material that consists of multiple small crystals, is used to make silicon wafers, solar cells and other products. After sizzling growth in recent times, the solar energy market is projected to dim and “hit the wall” for panel, equipment and materials vendors in 2006, according to the analyst. 01/11/06 - Microbes - Carbon monoxide + water = hydrogen gas Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch's brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans. Isolated from a hot spring on the Russian volcanic island of Kunashir , this microbe lives almost entirely on carbon monoxide. While consuming this normally poisonous gas, the microbe mixes it with water, producing hydrogen gas as waste. As the world increasingly considers hydrogen as a potential biofuel, technology could benefit from having the genomes of such microbes. 01/11/06 - Tailpipe Test: Study Finds Worst Polluters Age is a huge factor. A vehicle from 1985 emits almost 38 times more carbon monoxide than a 2001 model, on average. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 4 million cars and trucks that underwent government-mandated emissions testing in Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts. The best and worst - BMWs did best. Hondas and Volvos also tended to pass exams more often than other makes, but were inconsistent from state to state. Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, and GM cars were the most likely to fail. For trucks, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan performed best. Ford was a distant fourth. Chrysler and Mitsubishi failed most often. Foreign cars are not necessarily better, Guldmann said. Toyotas have the least difference between older and newer cars, because their older cars already polluted less. Other foreign makes-Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai-got much worse with age, with older models showing high emissions levels. 01/11/06 - Climate fears, water shortages haunt Europe France's environment minister has said three dry years in a row have left the country facing possibly record water shortages this year. "This could be a very difficult year, and perhaps a record in terms of drought," Nelly Olin said. The European Environment Agency (EEA) says water shortages and soaring temperatures in southern Europe are becoming the norm, and its climate models suggest much of the continent may start to become drier as deserts advance. Many scientists say emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from cars, power plants and factories are building up in the atmosphere and driving up global temperatures. Fires were a particular problem in Portugal last year, claiming the life of 18 people and destroying 300,000 hectares (750,000 acres) of forest. In Spain, fires also raged last year, special wells had to be dug in the south of the country and crops were decimated. Spain's water reserves stand at just 45 percent of capacity, recent Environment Ministry data show. Spain's cereal crop was devastated by last year's drought, while hydroelectric power generation -- one of the cheapest and cleanest ways of producing electricity -- fell to its lowest in 48 years, according to grid data. 01/11/06 - Investors buyin to Blacklight Power media release for $50M Notable story today by VentureWire (sub required) about the company founded by medical doctor Randell Mills, called Blacklight Power, which claims to have found an alternative source of energy, and has gotten $50M from respected investors. Some are calling Mills' work profound. Others are calling it "utter nonsense". Basically, Mills claims to have discovered a process which generates "hydrinos" -- a previously unknown form of hydrogen in which electrons move below the ground state to release energy. Numerous mainstream physicists, however, are calling such a result impossible, according to the piece. 01/11/06 - Cough medicines don't help recovery Adults should use older non-prescription antihistamines and decongestants to stop the flow of mucus that causes the cough. Children can be harmed by cough medicines, they warn, and they will usually get better without help. Dr Richard Irwin of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who chaired the guidelines panel, said: "Cough is the number one reason why patients seek medical attention." But he added: "There is no clinical evidence that over-the-counter cough expectorants or suppressants actually relieve cough." He said coughs in children were worrisome and annoying, but added cough syrup was not the answer. "Cough is very common in children. However, cough and cold medicines are not useful in children and can actually be harmful. "In most cases, a cough that is unrelated to chronic lung conditions, environmental influences, or other specific factors, will resolve on its own." Several studies have suggested that over-the-counter cough medicine do little more than offer comfort to patients. 01/11/06 - India's Supersonic Rocket to cut satellite launch costs up to 90% India has joined a handful of countries with the technology to build a new type of supersonic rocket that could reduce satellite launching costs by nearly 90 percent, the nation's space agency said Tuesday. The so-called Supersonic Combustion Ramjet _ or Scramjet _ technology should eventually help India build lighter and faster rockets, the Indian Space Research Organization said. Conventional rockets carry their own oxygen to burn as fuel, but Scramjet rockets will take oxygen from the atmosphere, making them lighter and faster. Indian scientists this week tested a prototype Scramjet engine for seven seconds, simulating travel at six times the speed of sound, said a space agency spokesman, S. Krishnamurthy. The fastest that a conventional aircraft can fly while taking in air is Mach 3.2, or 3.2 times the speed of sound, achieved by the U.S. Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird. "We need his new technology to do that (take in air) at a velocity of Mach six," Krishnamurthy said, adding that scientists hope Scramjets will eventually be able to reach speeds as high as 24 times the speed of sound. Developers hope that Scramjets could bring the cost of launching satellites from the current level of $12,000 or more per 2.2 pounds of payload to less than $1,000. 01/11/06 - Underwater Acoustic Diver Disrupter If you are scuba diving, be sure not to swim anywhere near any ship or installation that has been protected by the Raytheon Corporation's new "swimmer denial" system. Otherwise you will very quickly feel extremely sick and probably drown. Raytheon’s underwater sensors detect any unwelcome presence and trigger an underwater sound system that emits extremely powerful pulses of low frequency audio. The pulse rate and audio frequency are chosen to make human organs resonate like organ pipes, causing swimmers to vomit into their masks or suffer internal ruptures. The idea of blasting very powerful sound at underwater targets is not new. It can even be used to detonate incoming torpedoes. But it can also cause havoc with marine life. Raytheon's new system is "greener" because the main sound projector, in the middle of the secure zone, emits sounds with power and frequency that are relatively safe. A dozen or so secondary projectors in a ring round the zone also emit safe pulses. But in the region near each secondary projector the main and secondaries combine to produce a sound which is decidedly dangerous. Would-be spies or terrorists cannot get through the ring but there is no widespread danger to fish, dolphins or whales. Patent Application - 20050232084 01/11/06 - Peugeot Citroen unveils suitcase sized fuel cell PSA Chairman Jean-Martin Folz told a news conference that the best way to save on fuel consumption of cars in the short term was by boosting the use of diesel and by adding bio-fuel to diesel. For the medium term, hybrid diesel engines would offer further reduction in consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, while fuel cells, which release energy from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen with a catalyst, were for a later stage, he said. "This technology is still at its early stages but offers a real answer for the future," he said, as PSA unveiled the Genepac fuel cell -- an 80 KW power unit the size of a big suitcase that can be used in light municipal vehicles. It can run for 500 km (310 miles), which is more than previous fuel cell projects, but still insufficient for general use. Its size should also be reduced. At 57 litres, Genepac is much smaller than previous versions but would still not fit in a small passenger car. Another problem remains starting with cold temperatures. Folz remained scathing about petrol hybrid engines, such as developed by Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp, saying these "serve no interest whatsoever in industrialised countries" because they still consume more than diesel engines. According to the Washington-based Society of Automotive Engineers, a fuel cell can be two or three times more efficient than an internal combustion engine and it has no moving parts. 01/10/06 - China betting its future as Science leader "The major scientific program running right now in China is this one, called 97-3 Program," Professor Cao said. "A major huge program to catch up with the scientific development of the whole world. Started in 1997, March. This program is for basic research. According to the needs of the nation." The 97-3 Program concentrates research in six areas, agricultural biotechnology, energy, informatics, natural resources and the environment, population and health, and materials science. Cao's own concern is with population and health. In this area the research is divided into 20 fields. She took me through them with the aid of a 33-page position paper she had put together in anticipation of my visit. The list is diverse, the projects ambitious. Yet even the most basic research -- in stem cells, for example -- has been defined in terms of immediate applications. 01/10/06 - Removing earwax with a SuperSoaker (You've probably heard of 'ear candles' that are cone shaped fibrous material where the cone is placed in the ear and the outside rim is set on fire. The heat causes a 'drawing' of the melted wax to collect in the fibrous cone. - JWD) D.K. (a family and emergency physician) assessed the utility of the Super Soaker Max-D 5000. He was surprised to note that it was able to deliver a superbly pressured narrow stream of water equivalent to, or perhaps exceeding, the quality of that achieved with standard ear-syringing instruments. The owner of the Super Soaker Max-D 5000 was sought out; after hearing an explanation of its intended application, he granted permission for its use. Verbal consent (covering risks and benefits) was obtained from the patient. He then changed into swimming shorts, located himself on an ideal location on the deck and held a Tupperware container (product number 1611-16) to the side of his neck, in lieu of a kidney basin. The Super Soaker Max-D 5000 was filled with body-temperature water and then mildly pressurized using the blue hand-pump. The trigger was depressed, releasing a gentle, narrow jet of water, which was then aimed along the posterior wall of the ear canal (Fig. 1). After approximately 15 seconds, the jet was aimed along the anterior wall. This cycle was repeated (with occasional repressurizing) until the Super Soaker was empty. Midway through the second load's stream, wax particles began to run out of the ear. Just after starting the third load, a large plug of wax burst forth from the patient's ear. The 3 generations of family members present took turns admiring (or recoiling from) the specimen. The patient exclaimed in joy, "I can hear again!" 01/10/06 - Women prefer slimmer waists to higher IQs A new survey has found that the 'slim is in' policy of society has put so much pressure on women that a majority of them would rather have a small waist than a higher IQ. The survey, for website tescodiets.com, found that 51 percent of women would pick having a slim figure over other problems such as never having money worries again, dating the A-list star of their choice or a genius-level IQ score. The survey also found that while one in three women spend more time worrying about their weight than their finances, jobs or families, 40 per cent said that their worst fear was having to try on clothes in a shop's communal fitting rooms. The obsession with having the perfect figure not only has one in three women lying to their friends about their weight, but it also has one in four women trying to deceive their partner about their size. Deanne Jade, principal of the National Centre of Eating Disorders, said that more and more women were seeing their curves as fat. 01/10/06 - Homeland Security opening private mail In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary. But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance. Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. “I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. “That’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,” he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World. A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn’t speak directly to Goodman’s case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary. “All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,” says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. “All mail means ‘all mail,’” said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point. “This process isn’t something we’re trying to hide,” Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency’s Web site. “We’ve had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created,” Mohan said. However, Mohan declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened, but said, “obviously it’s a security-related criteria.” 01/10/06 - CD copies last 2-5 years, videotape lasts up to 20 years Computerworld has interviewed Kurt Gerecke, an IBM storage expert and physicist who claims burned CDs only have a two to five-year lifespan, depending on the quality of the CD. From the article: "The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data 'shifting' on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam." Gerecke recommends magnetic tapes to store pictures, videos and songs. 01/10/06 - Cancer sniffing dogs accurate 99% of the time The dogs correctly detected 99% of the lung cancer samples, and made a mistake with only 1% of the healthy controls. With breast cancer, they correctly detected 88% of the positive samples, and made a mistake on only 2% of the controls. The work is convincing, says James C Walker, director of the Florida State University Sensory Research Institute in Tallahassee, US. In 2004 Walker and colleagues showed that dogs could sniff out melanomas. He says that the next step is to see if dogs are really detecting cancer, or if they might be sensing a more general disease symptom, such as one that comes from inflammation. 01/10/06 - Patent Office initiating reforms The patent office has come under increasing pressure in recent years from critics who contend that it issues patents without adequate investigation of earlier inventions. As a result, conflicts over published patents have loosed an avalanche of intellectual property litigation. At a meeting last month with companies and organizations that support open-source software (software that can be distributed and modified freely), including I.B.M., Red Hat, Novell and some universities, officials of the patent office discussed how to give patent examiners access to better information and other ways to issue higher-quality patents. Two of the initiatives would rely on recently developed Internet technologies. An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas. The third initiative is focused on the creation of a patent quality index that would serve as a tool for patent applicants to use in writing their applications. It is based on work done by R. Polk Wagner, an intellectual property expert at the University of Pennsylvania. 01/10/06 - RFID customer loyalty cards for personalized services NEC has announced a new CRM solution that enables Japanese shoppers to show RFID mobile phone straps (which are, presumably, straps for carrying around your mobile phone in Keiti-crazed Japan) or customer loyalty cards to an in-store RFID device to receive more personalized services. Backend solutions build personal profiles based on everything from past purchase behavior to astrological signs so store clerks can better tailor their interactions with customers. NEC has already launched such a solution in the Shanghai Department store in, suitably, Shanghai China. Already 10,000 customers have been given RFID-enabled smart tags for use in-store. 01/10/06 - Tips for taking Professional Photos Designer Lindsay Landis has written a guide for giving your photographs that professional touch. When taking your own photos, you want lots of light - but not direct light. Direct light will cause harsh shadows, which you don’t want. DO NOT USE A FLASH! Flashes wash out colors and details - and even the entire photo if you are taking close up shots. The tutorial has a lot of other great tips for getting a professional finish on a tight budget. Lindsay edits the picture using Photoshop, so you’ll get more mileage out of the tutorial if you have Photoshop. If not, you can still learn a lot about setting up and taking a professional shot. 01/10/06 - Package Mapper Package Mapper shows you a map of your FedEx, UPS, USPS package routes. Enter a carrier and a tracking number to see your package’s progress plotted on the map. Sign in to enter a list of packages and see their current locations on a table or map. 01/09/06 - China invents planting machine to tackle desertification A newly invented vegetation-planting machine gives hope to the effort to control desertification that has haunted the north China region for years. The machine can work two to three hectares of land per day, said the Institute of of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences after the technical appraisal. Trial operations of the machine in about 67,000 hectares of pasture in Inner Mongolia, north China, since 2004 show the forage grass planted with the machine survived the harsh winter and spring seasons in the desertified land, and no wind-blown sand is spotted in the planted areas. Weighing 12 tons, the 2.8-meter-high and 6.6-meter-long machine can move swiftly in the desert, and complete the whole procedure of water spraying, ditch digging, sowing, fertilizing, and moisture layer forming in 5 minutes, said experts from the botany institute. China now has 1.74 million square kilometers of desertified land, mostly in the north. China's decade-long desertification control efforts have already yielded some effect since last year, according to an official in the forestry sector. Wind- and sand-control projects and reforestation helped add greenery to over 18 percent of the country's land in 2005. 01/09/06 - UM Engineers Offer Long-Term Relief for Heating & Cooling Costs New software developed at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, with support from industry sponsors, could lead to major savings for consumers. Called CoilDesigner, it helps manufacturers design customized heating and cooling systems that cost less to build and use less energy. "CoilDesigner can help designers reduce heating system equipment costs by more than 10 percent.” “It also gives manufacturers the ability to design products that could use less energy to heat and cool homes, and even switch from gas-powered components to electricity-powered components on the fly, depending on prevailing energy prices. The advantages to system manufacturers and their customers will be significant,” Radermacher says. CoilDesigner is a tool for creating air-cooled heat exchangers used in a range of applications, from automotive radiators and climate control components to air-conditioners, heat pumps and refrigeration systems of a wide range of sizes. Two of these programs include VapCyc and TransRef. VapCyc simulates vapor compression cycles (the processes that make heat pumps work) in residential air conditioners, heaters and various types of refrigeration systems, and allows for the optimization of efficiency and cost. TransRef helps in the design of the controls of these systems. 01/09/06 - Skepticism greets claim of possible alien microbes The story of the specks began on July 25, 2001, when residents of Kerala, a state in southwestern India, started seeing scarlet rain in some areas. A paper to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago. Scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are. “These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA,” wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper. “Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?” The mystery began when the scarlet showers containing the red specks hit parts of India in 2001. Researchers said the particles might be dust or a fungus, but it remained unclear. The new paper includes a chemical analysis of the particles, a description of their appearance under microscopes and a survey of where they fell. It assesses various explanations for them and concludes that the specks, which vaguely resemble red blood cells, might have come from a meteor. If the particles do represent alien life forms, said Louis and Kumar, this would fit with a longstanding theory called panspermia, which holds that life forms could travel around the universe inside comets and meteors. The particles look like one-celled organisms and are about 4 to 10 thousandths of a millimeter wide, the researchers wrote, somewhat larger than typical bacteria. “Under low magnification the particles look like smooth, red coloured glass beads. Under high magnifications (1000x) their differences in size and shape can be seen,” they wrote. “Shapes vary from spherical to ellipsoid and slightly elongated… These cell-like particles have a thick and coloured cell envelope, which can be well identified under the microscope.” A few had broken cell envelopes, they added. The particles seem to lack a nucleus, the core DNA-containing compartment that animal and plant cells have, the researchers wrote. Chemical tests indicated they also lacked DNA, the gene-carrying molecule that most types of cells contain. Nonetheless, Louis and Kumar wrote that the particles show “fine-structured membranes” under magnification, like normal cells. The outer envelope seems to contain an “inner capsule,” they added, which in some places “appears to be detached from the outer wall to form an empty region inside the cell. Further, there appears to be a faintly visible mucus layer present on the outer side of the cell.” 01/09/06 - Grim reminder that coal still critical to U.S. Even as the tragic death of 12 men beneath the ground reminds the nation of its grimy coal-mining past, the ebony jewel they sought remains very much part of our present. Even if we don't know it. It's hard, at first, to see how that could be the case. The notion of a coal-fired stove seems old-timey now, and a coal furnace almost unimaginable. To see a coal delivery truck in one of our big cities, or a coal-driven locomotive steaming across the countryside now, would be as anachronistic as a horse and buggy. But if we don't see or feel or smell the power of coal any more, that does not mean we have left it behind. More than half this country's electricity is supplied by coal. About 130 new coal-fired power plants are on the drawing boards for the next few years, and that could be just the beginning. With the price of power sharply higher, the U.S.-- long known as the Saudi Arabia of coal-- is likely to be relying on it for generations to come. Coal, it's image notwithstanding, is not old-fashioned. It's just that most Americans have the luxury of ignoring it. "The problem is, it's not burned by us directly. It's burned in power plants. And because of that we can live with the illusion that coal is the fuel of the past," says Barbara Freese, author of "Coal: A Human History," a book documenting the rock's role in industrialization. Today, utilities are planning 130 new coal-fired plants, and another 20 or so plants that rely on coal gasification, a process that turns solid coal into gas. Not long ago, experts would've told you that chances are many of those would never get built. The nation's coal reserves could last 250 years, some experts say. Maybe longer. 01/09/06 - Low-cost lamps brighten the future of rural India "Life doesn't halt anymore when darkness falls." The innovative lights were installed by the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental organization focused on bringing light to rural India. Some 100,000 Indian villages do not yet have electricity. The GSBF lamps use LEDs - light emitting diodes - that are four times more efficient than an incandescent bulb. After a $55 installation cost, solar energy lights the lamp free of charge. As many as 1.5 billion people - nearly 80 million in India alone - light their houses using kerosene as the primary lighting media. The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and - despite being subsidized - consumes nearly 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household's budget. A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year. LED lamps, or more specifically white LEDS, are believed to produce nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb. "This technology can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100 watt light bulb," says Dave Irvine-Halliday. At $55 each, the lamps installed in nearly 300 homes by GSBF cost nearly half the price of other solar lighting systems. Jasjeet Singh Chaddha, the founder of the NGO, currently imports his LEDs from China. He wants to set up an LED manufacturing unit and a solar panel manufacturing unit in India. If manufactured locally, the cost of his LED lamp could plummet to $22, as they won't incur heavy import duties. "But we need close to $5 million for this," he says. "And investments are difficult to come by." Before the LED lamps came, spending Rs. 40 (a little less than a dollar) each month on kerosene was too much. Jadhav earns just Rs. 50 a day as a contract laborer, and supports a family of five. "Now the money saved," he says with a smile, "goes into the children's education." 01/09/06 - 2007 moon rocket production kicks off China is scheduled to send its first satellite to the moon in April 2007 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, in a one-year lunar mission dubbed Chang'e Project. Apart from the moon exploration project, China also plans to launch four satellites by the end of this year. These include "Xinnuo 2," a large-capacity satellite for communications. Two others are for scientific research and one for weather forecasting. Jin also outlined a long list of China's priority projects in several industries related to national defence, emphasizing the development of products for civilian use. "We will give priority to research into new regional jets this year," he said. "And we will start developing large airplanes in the next five years." Last September, the country announced the trial production of ARJ-21, or Advanced Regional Jet, hoping to reduce reliance on Boeing and Airbus in the domestic aviation market. The 100 per cent domestically designed short-haul passenger plane is expected to take its maiden trial flight late this year, Xinhua reported. 01/09/06 - Pataki Wants Drivers to Fill Up With Ethanol or Biodiesel Some 200,000 New Yorkers own vehicles that can run on corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline, but many don't know it. 01/09/06 - Researchers Ask - Can Humans Hibernate? The Hopi Indians call it Hölchoko: "the sleeping one." During winter the tiny animal, weighing in at a paltry 50 grams, spends up to 25 days in a row in rock fissures or underneath cactuses. Its body temperature, normally hovering at just below a toasty 40°C (104°F), can drop to less than 5°C (41°F) during icy nights in the desert. The phenomenon is known as winter sleep, or hibernation, and it was long viewed as the exclusive domain of the marmot, the bear and the dormouse, mammals that sleep away about half the year. But new observations prove that not only mammals, but also birds are capable of shutting their metabolisms to minimal levels. In addition to the common poorwill, birds such as the European nightjar, the common swift and the tawny frogmouth, which is native to Australia, repeatedly fall into a standby mode that can last anywhere from a few hours to weeks. "What we used to call winter sleep or winter rigidity appears to be a general reaction by many animals in stressful situations," says Walter Arnold of the Research Institute for the Study of Wild Animals and Ecology at the University of Vienna. A lack of food or water, and not cold temperatures, say the scientists, is usually what prompts animals to retreat into energy savings mode. The temperature in the flanks of deer can drop to 15°C (59°F), and researchers even recorded temperatures as low as 3°C (37°F) in the animals' extremities. "Our legs would freeze immediately," says Arnold. But a lack of blood flow is valuable to the animals, because it results in a drastic reduction in energy consumption. "The ability to reduce metabolism is so widespread among vertebrates that it is most likely a very old, phylogenetic mechanism," says Heldmaier. 01/09/06 - How does Matter Terminate? That is, at the microscopic level, how does nature make the transition from a densely packed material surface (the skin of an apple, say) to the nothingness that lies above? This process really comes into play in collapsed stars, where strange quarks could roughen the surface of the stars. Such a surface, says Los Alamos scientist Andrew Steiner, can be compared to a liquid surface. On Earth, liquid surfaces are generally flat. Because of surface tension, too much energy would be required to overcome the tension and form additional facets above the surface. At a quark star, by contrast, surface tension may not be large and the crust of the star could form extra surfaces, nugget-like objects without any undue energy cost. The positively charged quark lumps would be surrounded by a sea of electrons, as required to make the crust electrically neutral. Where did the electrons come from? They're left over from the atoms that were crushed in the collapse phase; some electrons are pressed into protons to make neutrons, but some would have survived. What would be the test of the hypothesis of an inhomogeneous termination at a quark-star surface? Again, the Los Alamos group is at odds with the prevailing model, which says that quark stars should be more luminous than neutron stars. Au contraire, they say. Just as foam on the surface of a water surface clouds our view into the water, so the quark bumps on an otherwise smooth surface at a quark star would enhance the scattering of photons and neutrinos, lowering the quark star's luminosity. 01/08/06 - Advice on building an electric car So, you want to build an electric car, or are at least interested in building an electric car? I apologize for the grossly long topic, but another member had some questions about converting a car to electric and had interest in the subject. This post only touches the surface of this subject and is by no means in-depth, but I chose to include information that I felt would be relevent to someone new to the subject with minimal skills when it comes to working on cars. This topic is divided into six sub topics: I) How will you use your EV and what sort of EV will you choose to make. II) How to go about researching the parts you need and how to build the car, and how to figure out what to expect of the car’s performance in range and acceleration. III) Internet and literature on electric vehicles IV) Where to buy parts V) Specs and cost analysis of three conversion examples(Compact, sports car, and pickup) VI) Maximizing vehicle efficiency VII) Other areas of interest(electric car myths and politics, electric car racing) 01/08/06 - Americans say GOP problems getting old fast A new poll shows that Americans want a change of leadership in Congress by a 49% - 36% margin, while one-third feel the country is headed in the wrong direction and Bush's approval rating continues to list at 40. The only reason for hope for the Right is the leadership vacuum that has plagued the Left for years now. "If the Democrats had any leadership or any message, they could be poised for a good year," noted Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman. "But in the absence of that, they have not been able to capitalize on Republican woes. Because of the size of the GOP majority, Democrats have to run the board, and I don't see that happening." 01/08/06 - Blood Plasma exchange comes to aid of paralytic patients Plasma exchange has become the saviour for those suffering from paralysis with many such patients regaining movement of their limbs upon treatment. When whole blood is separated into its components, plasma, one of the components of blood, has a shelf life of one year. This longer shelf life of plasma, unlike whole blood, which can be stored only for 35 days, has been used in treating various serious conditions including paralysis. “A patient suffering with paralysis reaches a critical condition and is treated in the Intermediate Care Unit (IMCU) with a ventilator. Through plasma exchange, we remove the unwanted plasma in the body and then transfuse the good plasma stored in the blood bank,” said Dr N Rajakumar, Professor and Head, Department of Blood Transfusion Medicine, Government Stanley Hospital. A cost-effective procedure, it involves taking one unit of blood from the patient and removing the unwanted plasma. The patient’s own Red Blood Corpuscles (RBCs) and the fresh frozen plasma are given to the patient, he said. One to two units of blood can be taken for every sitting and nearly 10 percent of the volume of blood can be taken from the patient and replaced with plasma till the clinical condition of the patient improves. “We had a 25-year-old patient who was suffering from paralysis. He was treated in several hospitals but still could not walk. With plasma exchange at the Stanley hospital, he started walking after three or four sittings,” Dr Rajakumar said. “The entire process is computerised. The procedure takes one hour and the amount of blood removed from the patient depends on the body weight of the patient. With 1,000 ml of blood taken from the patient, it is replaced with the stored plasma,” Dr Selvarajan said. 01/08/06 - Burning tumours reduces need for surgery A treatment that involves using high-frequency currents to burn tumours has been found to drastically cut the need for expensive surgery, a Hong Kong study published Thursday found. Seventeen out of 18 patients suffering from adrenal tumours had recorded significant improvements in their condition, while two thirds no longer needed drugs to control their symptoms. The test subjects all underwent the "burning" treatment at Prince of Wales Hospital over the last 15 months. The treatment involves blasting the tumour with high-frequency currents delivered by an electrode needle, until they cooked. The study carried out by the Chinese University found that after treatment, the tumour stayed in the body but stopped secreting the hormone that causes high blood pressure. 01/08/06 - Real terrorists rape consumers How many times have we heard that filthy lie, "It's for your own good," as politicians and their owners overstuff their pockets and fat stomachs at your expense? Well, the other boot has finally dropped, and embedded in the rears of America's working families. We saw it coming; the first thud was a pro-big-money overhaul of bankruptcy procedures that forces single mothers and workers unemployed by federal free-trade sellouts to pay off their debts, even if they can't buy groceries for their children. Debtors are forced to pay for indoctrination classes, even if they are disabled or lost their jobs, where they are given a restructuring plan to pay back debts after being 'allowed' a small amount for monthly living. "Federal regulators" are issuing "guidelines" that credit card issuers are pretending are mandatory statutes forcing them to ignore all previous contracts and starting January 1, 2006, to charge double the minimum monthly payments for all credit card balances. Want to know who these regulators are? They're said to be the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision. Try finding the list of governing board members on any of these sites. Although they're paid with our taxes, they're as elusive as Mafia dons. Their new 'guideline,' which will often double minimum credit card payments, will drastically affect many household budgets. And they don't care. Most credit card companies have been sending to consumers replacement credit cards with new terms hidden in the unreadable fine print, saying that they can charge whatever they want and raise the minimum payment to whatever they want. Keep kicking any dog and he will eventually bite your leg. That's a lesson that the Users in our society have forgotten. I hear many families plan to "Just say NO!" to usurious megacorporations that have sucked them dry. If they can't handle the double payments and the whopping interest rate penalty increases, they will just let the credit card companies pay $400-an-hour lawyers for five million court appearances trying to collect the uncollectible. Meanwhile the government will pay greater amounts for court resources, all for a 'guideline' that benefits a few of the rich by exploiting all of the poor. 01/08/06 - The Virus of Faith Controversial scientist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, dubbed "Darwin's Rottweiler," calls religion a "virus" and faith-based education "child abuse" in a two-part series he wrote and appears in that begins airing on the UK's Channel 4, beginning tomorrow evening. Dawkins attacks the teaching of religion to children, calling it child abuse. "Innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods," he says. "It's time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. Isn't it weird the way we automatically label a tiny child with its parents' religion?" "Sectarian religious schools," Dawkins asserts, have been "deeply damaging" to generations of children. "The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist," he says. Dawkins then criticizes Abraham, compares Moses to Hitler and Saddam Hussein, and calls the New Testament "St Paul's nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin." 01/07/06 - Rooftop Garden Recycles Water A new vegetated rooftop recycling system uses plants to filter waste water from washbasins, baths and showers. The Green Roof Water Recycle System, or GROW, was invented by Chris Shirley-Smith, who founded Water Works UK and who is currently collaborating with scientists at the Imperial College London and Cranfield University to test the invention's effectiveness. "It's a new idea of supplying non-drinking water in an urban environment," said David Butler. Unlike other systems used to treat grey water, the GROW prototype does not require expensive filtration technology or consume energy to function. It is a low-tech solution consisting of a platform about 10 feet by 10 feet that is elevated on one end. Inside, a river of granular material zig-zags back and forth from the elevated end to the low end. Semi-aquatic plants such as water mint, whose roots have disinfectant qualities, as well as yellow flag iris, marsh marigold and the common reed, are rooted into the granular material. Waste water from washbasins, baths, and showers is pumped into the platform and allowed to trickle down through the granular material. As the water seeps through the system, the plant roots take up the dissolved pollutants, leaving behind useable, but non-drinkable water that could be dyed blue with vegetable color to signify its quality and used to flush toilets or to water gardens on the ground. By using GROW, more than half of the water that enters a building or home could be used twice before being flushed into the communal waste management system. 01/07/06 - Nano Solar Cell Paint to produce Energy IMAGINE IF YOU COULD PAINT the roof of your plant with a nano type of plastic that would create enough alternative energy to heat and cool the facility. While the idea may seem far fetched, it may soon become a reality because of a breakthrough in solar research by a team of scientists from Wake Forest University and New Mexico State University. While traditional solar panels are made of silicon, which is expensive, brittle, and shatters like glass, the team's organic solar cells consist of plastic that is a relatively inexpensive, flexible material that can wrap around structures or can even be applied like paint. Until now, low energy efficiency levels produced by organic solar cells were a drawback. To be effective producers of energy, they must be able to convert 10% of the energy in sunlight to electricity. Typical silicon panels are about 12% energy conversion efficient. That level of energy conversion has been a difficult reach for researchers on organic solar technology, with many of them hitting about 3% to 4%. But the research team garnered a solar energy efficiency level of 5.2%. A cheap, flexible plastic made of a polymer blend would revolutionize the solar market, Curran said. 01/07/06 - I Think You Can, I Believe You Can What I have tried to do here is to come up with a list of reasons of why most Saudis don’t invent or innovate. I have combined points of view from both Saudis and non-Saudis and here are the results: Education: Our educational system is based on memorization and not on acquiring cognitive abilities. Even in college, I only came across 8 out of 60 subjects that challenged my ability to ‘think outside the box.’ In order to pass the test, all you had to do was memorize the book or the questions and problems set in the previous years. Someone I knew in high school learned Braille (the writing system for the blind) and cheated on exams by reading the underside of the desk with his hand. He is considered a genius but a failure within our educational system. The Business World: Getting a patent is a long and tiring process and I have only one question I’d like answered: Why is it that whenever a Saudi invents something, he files for a patent in the US instead of here? In the end, it all really comes down to incentive. It is said that in Saudi Arabia unless you have the talent to be a singer, poet or a football player, then you are on your own. Try to invent anything and all you get is a few “wows” and “nice words” from friends and family. If you try to get a patent, then God help you. And if you market your invention and it shows a hint of success, then cheap knock-offs from the Far East will soon flood the markets and drown any hopes of profit. 01/07/06 - Europe seeks homegrown power solutions to cut reliance on energy imports The Russian-Ukraine gas spat, which led to European customers reporting a sharp drop-off in their own gas supplies, is yet another wake-up call after oil prices last year rose above $70 a barrel. Unless it changes its consumption or savings habits, the EU will import almost 70 percent of its energy by 2030 and it will compete for a finite pool of oil and gas with energy-hungry boom economies such as India and China. "As long as we spend more and more on energy, we will be getting more and more dependent," said EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. "We should be looking more at the energy sources we have in the European Union." A quarter of Europe's imported gas comes from Russia, but the nation's dispute with Ukraine raised questions about its reliability as a supplier. If Europe is to lean less on the state-controlled monopoly Gazprom, it will have to buy more from North Africa and the Middle East, build new pipelines - such as the Caspian Sea route via Turkey - and use more liquefied natural gas, which is easier to pump and transport. But these are short-term solutions. A quarter of Europe's imported gas comes from Russia, but the nation's dispute with Ukraine raised questions about its reliability as a supplier. If Europe is to lean less on the state-controlled monopoly Gazprom, it will have to buy more from North Africa and the Middle East, build new pipelines - such as the Caspian Sea route via Turkey - and use more liquefied natural gas, which is easier to pump and transport. But these are short-term solutions. 01/07/06 - Russian Rocket Shoes for 'power walking' (Reminds me of the 7 League Boots legend. - JWD) Sergei Atanov, a 40-year-old engineering instructor, comes flying down the polished stone hallway wearing a pair of boots that resemble an invention of science fiction, as though his feet had grown bionic appendages that propel him at high speed. Mr. Atanov gambols through the Soviet-era building and picks up his pace in the snowy campus courtyard, showing off the power of the devices strapped to his feet. Every time his foot strikes the ground, the contraption compresses and a tiny explosion of methane fuel goes off inside a cylinder near his ankle. This forces a piston downwards, throwing Mr. Atanov into the air and giving him strides the length of the average car. "You have a feeling like you're flying," Mr. Atanov says, but without much enthusiasm. The engineer has been demonstrating these boots for more than two decades, and he seems tired of the routine. The inventors hoped their devices would help police chase down criminals, give sports enthusiasts a new way of exploring the outdoors and allow postal workers to make deliveries more quickly. Users can run at up to 30 kilometres an hour, but only for five minutes before they have to be refuelled with a syringe. 50 pairs manufactured this year were sold for about $1,500 (U.S.) to gadget enthusiasts in Russia, South Korea, Germany, Slovakia and the United States. Fourteen pairs remain available through the university, but of the 36 pairs shipped out, most have generated complaints or returns by unhappy customers. "From the outset, nearly all the customers complained," Prof. Rudoi says. "But the problem is not with the boots, but with themselves. They didn't know how to run with them." Veteran demonstrators, such as Mr. Atanov, make running with 2.3 kilograms of combustion engine strapped to your feet seem like a graceful affair. But the hazards are obvious from Prof. Rudoi's videos of students trying the devices for the first time: When they fail to lock their knees to absorb the thrust, or lose their balance, the students go sprawling. 01/07/06 - Invention saves up to 40% on heating/cooling systems Opto Generic Devices Inc. has developed a technology that can reduce the energy use of fans in heating and cooling systems, company spokesman Ethan Durham said. The firm, located in Herkimer County about 16 miles from Cooperstown, has partnered with the Carrier Corp. to market the units nationwide. The 4½-by-5-inch unit, which can fit inside the front panel of a system, uses the small motor on heating and cooling systems to adjust the fan speed to avoid energy spikes, Durham explained. The device can help reduce energy costs by more than 40 percent, according to company officials. Each unit has a payback period averaging three years. The payback period will vary depending on usage and cost of electricity. 01/07/06 - How inventors should protect their work while seeking funding How do inventors approach investors for backing without giving away their precious, fledgling products? Alan Walker, of Scyence Systems in Hackney, East London, developed a mobile hand washing device for hospitals to prevent the spread of dangerous infection, such as the superbug. He had no funds to build prototypes and took his idea to the NHS. But, he says, they wanted all rights to the design and for him to pay for the development. He was not impressed. Normally, says Carl Rohsler, an intellectual property lawyer, there is a give-and-take agreement. The inventor gives up some of their rights in return for development funds and promotion of the product. They then often receive royalty-style payments. But the first step is to protect the design with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) - preventing people to whom an inventor shows plans from stealing the idea. Mr Walker did right by getting the NHS to sign an NDA and says that if inventors do not take this precaution they could be "bankrupt in about two hours!" Inventors’ websites offer generic NDA templates for around £10. The inventor, Mr Rohsler says, must be careful not to otherwise disclose their idea to anyone unless they have secured a patent. If they tell anyone about their invention without using an NDA, that constitutes a public disclosure - which can make a patent application invalid. "You need to be able to show that all disclosures are confidential," Mr Rohsler says. "Don’t go talking to your local newspaper about your great idea." Patents tend to be limited to one country. So if an inventor gains a patent for a lamp in the UK, there is nothing to stop someone in Germany copying it. To apply in 20 countries, having the application translated into 20 languages, can cost a lot of money. 01/07/06 - Hybrid Claims Found Invalid (This is an interesting ruling because the inventor combined 'classes' in one patent which negates the patent. - JWD) IPXL alleged that Amazon’s "1-click system" infringed certain claims of its patent. The district court held that one of the asserted claims, which claimed both an apparatus and its method of use, was invalid due to indefiniteness. IPXL appealed, and the Federal Circuit affirmed. The claim in issue was directed to an ATM system and to a method for using it. The Federal Circuit held the claim invalid under § 112 ¶2 because it did not "apprise a person of ordinary skill in the art of its scope." The Court focused on the fact that the combination of the two statutory classes of invention rendered a manufacturer or seller of the claimed apparatus unable to determine, based on the claim, whether it could be found liable for contributory infringement if a buyer or user of the apparatus were to carry out the claimed method of using the apparatus. 01/07/06 - NASA will pay Russian Space Agency $21.8 million per passenger to/from Space Station (Remember, NASA has a +$16 BILLION a year budget but has to rent transport from FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS, definitely time for private enterprise with this kind of pitiful management. - JWD) Under the deal, Russia also will provide what Mathews described as “a small amount” of cargo space aboard a Progress resupply ship slated to launch to the station later this year and initial Soyuz training for NASA’s Expedition 14 crew member. The agreement also reserves a seat for Williams should he and his cosmonaut crewmate be forced to evacuate the station aboard a Soyuz craft in an emergency. As part of its contribution to the space station program, Russia has set aside Soyuz seats for American astronauts at no charge to the United States since 2000. But that deal essentially expired last October when Russia launched the 11th and final Soyuz called for under an earlier bilateral agreement. Mathews described the new agreement as a short term extension of an existing contract NASA signed with the Russian space agency before the Iran Nonproliferation Act became law in 2000. That act barred NASA from paying Russia for any space station-related goods and services as long as Russia continues to help Iran acquire missiles and other advanced weaponry. The law was amended by the U.S. Congress at the request of the White House in late 2005, clearing the way for NASA buy Soyuz and Progress services from Russia until 2011, when the temporary relief would expire. While NASA has only contracted for six months of services at this point, Mathews said Russia has agreed to honor the $21.8 million per seat price through 2011. 01/07/06 - New hybrids rolled out, but will hot sales continue? Automakers are rolling out several new hybrids at this year’s North American International Auto Show as hybrid sales continue to grow at a phenomenal pace. But consumers are finding out that hybrids are more expensive and may save less fuel than they thought, which could put the brakes on future hybrid sales. General Motors Corp. is making one of the most visible pushes, introducing two models with different types of hybrid power systems at the show in Detroit. Toyota Motor Corp. will introduce its new hybrid-powered Camry, while Ford Motor Co. will show off a sporty concept vehicle with a diesel-electric hybrid system it says gets up to 65 miles per gallon. Subaru also will have a hybrid concept at the show, which opens to the public Jan. 14. Some industry analysts say these vehicles and others coming to market in 2006 will spur more phenomenal growth for the U.S. hybrid market, which has increased by more than 140 percent in the past year alone. But others wonder if that growth will begin to stall, since hybrid vehicles remain far more expensive than their gas-powered counterparts. GM, which has been criticized in the past by some environmental groups for not offering more hybrids, is promoting the Green Line as a less expensive alternative to hybrids already on the market from Toyota and Ford. The Green Line’s hybrid system adds around $2,000 to the cost of a Saturn Vue, compared to a $3,500 premium or more for other hybrids, and will allow the Green Line to sell for under $23,000. That compares to a starting price of $33,030 for the similarly sized Toyota Highlander hybrid. The Green Line’s system is similar to other gas-electric hybrids in that it saves on gas consumption by shutting off the engine while idling, gives the vehicle a boost of electric power during acceleration and captures electrical energy when the vehicle is braking. GM brought down the price by making a simpler system that doesn’t run on electric power for as long as other hybrids, spokeswoman Susan Garavaglia said. 01/07/06 - Using 'The Power of Nightmares' to control society Current world leaders, documentarian Adam Curtis asserts, understand one thing extremely well: Fear of a powerful enemy, even a fictitious one, is necessary to control a society. In his extremely partisan, deeply flawed and utterly fascinating dissection of Western politics, Curtis sells his position that Islamic radicals and American neoconservatives spring from virtually identical sources. The three-part BBC documentary also goes far to explain the rise of the unholy triumvirate of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz, and makes the claim that al-Qaida was pure invention. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, you’ll find holes in Curtis’ thesis - but beyond the cheesy musical cues and sometimes paranoid theories, this may be one of the most important films ever made, an educational and compelling look at the process of global fear-mongering. See it while you can, because with its subversive subject matter, it will never make it to U.S. television - and possibly not to DVD, either. 01/06/06 - DIY Tin Can Stirling Engine # The engine should run off the heat from a tea light candle, assuming the flame is as intense as an average candle. Light and place the candle under the pressure vessel. After 30 seconds or so, gently spin the crank in the direction in which the displacer rises before the diaphragm. # This engine will rotate at 120 RPM or greater depending on the heat produced by the candle flame. If the flame is too small, the engine will not work. Cooling the top with water or ice may help, just don't let the water get inside the engine. The more water put on top of the vessel, the cooler it will stay and the faster the engine will run. A collar can be built around the displacer rod to keep water out of the vessel and the sides of the vessel top can be built up with a larger collar to make a space for holding water on top of the vessel. # The displacer, pressure vessel, diaphragm, etc. have to be air tight. There should only be minuscule air leakage around the pinhole when the engine operates. You can check it by putting a drop of oil on the pin hole. There should be a few small bubbles formed when the displacer moves up and down. # Minimize all binding and friction using drops of oil. The flywheel should turn freely. Verify that the flywheel is balanced with the displacer connected to the crankshaft and the diaphragm disconnected. The displacer should not hit the top or bottom of the pressure vessel. The diaphragm should not stretch or tighten during operation. It should "pop" in and out. 01/06/06 - Removing LCD burnin Apple has posted a helpful tutorial for removing image persistence on Apple LCDs (though the basic principle should work for any LCD). 1. Create an all-white screen in a graphics application such as AppleWorks or Photoshop, and save it as a JPEG file. 2. Use this as the image displayed by the screen saver. 3. Turn the display brightness down (but not off) to preserve backlight bulb life. They recommend that you display this white image for as long as the persistent image was displayed. This may not fix things entirely, but it should help remove some of that unsightly burn-in. 01/06/06 - Wiring 'brands' into the brain It has long been known that humans and animals can learn to associate an irrelevant stimulus with a positive experience, for example the ringing of a bell with food, as in the case of Pavlov’s dogs. And neuroimaging studies have recently implicated two regions buried deep in the brain - the ventral striatum and the ventral midbrain - as having an important role in this learning. Researchers developed a Pavlovian-type association by flashing a geometric shape on a computer screen and giving a squirt of juice into the volunteers’ mouths. However, the volunteers did not realise that they were being conditioned in this way - they were simply told to press a button to indicate on which side of the screen the shape had appeared. The team measured how the volunteers had become conditioned by measuring their anticipation of the juice squirts following an image by measuring the dilation of their pupils. The fMRI scans revealed significant responses reflecting learning in the ventral midbrain and the ventral striatum. Crucially, they found that the strength of the response correlated with the volunteer’s like or dislike of the juice. “Stronger neural responses occur in these regions to a cue that is associated with a more preferred food,” said Doherty. “This shows that when you see a cue that is predictive of a reward, you are able to access information about your subjective preferences.” Doherty says this kind of brain programming may have an evolutionary function in helping humans and animals predict both good and bad experiences in their environment. “For instance, if you learn that a particular fast food outlet gave you food poisoning the last time you ate there - it is going to be in your interest to know not to go there again once you see the sign for that shop in the street,” he says. 01/06/06 - HD recovery utilities: when you can't afford to lose that data First, you'll have to make sure that your problem isn't related to something else then the hard drive. The failure of your hard disk controller may also be causing this. You could always try to switch your hard drive from IDE1 to IDE2 and see if it fixes your problem. If it's not, remove the hard drive from your system, and bring it with you to a friend's house. If it still doesn't work over there, then you know what the problem is. The only solution to your problem now is to use a file recovery software, like PC Inspector File recovery. This application is completely free, and it works beautifully. It helped me once or twice in the past few years. Don't make yourself any illusion, it's not perfect, and doesn't work all the time (Like any other hard drive recovery utility). Sometimes, hard drive failure cannot be fixed, unless you want to take them to a specialized hard drive recovery shop and pay 1000's of dollars to have your data recovered. To be able to use PC INSPECTOR File Recovery you will need a working Windows System. Never install it on the drive from which you intend to recover data! The software must be installed and run on a second, independent drive. When you are done, the utility is very easy to use. Just let the application extensive HTML tutorial guide you through all the steps. I hope this little hard drive recovery how-to could help you. Hopefully, the application will let you recover your data. Download the FREE Inspector File Recovery program. 01/06/06 - DIY Tesla Coil from the trash So you still don't believe that people throw away tons of good stuff you can use to have some fun. To prove it to you, I've decided to make a Tesla Coil from only stuff I've found in the garbage. I will include a detailed list of all components used and where/what they came from. I'm not going to go into great detail of how these things work, because at least at this time I don't consider myself much of an expert on the subject. From what I have read, the tesla coil uses resonant conditions to boost say 10,000 volts to a million volts or so. The weird thing is that the output voltage is not really dependent on the coil turn ratio like conventional transformers are. This resonant condition is kinda like pushing a kid on a swing. If you give the kid a little kick at the right moment, e'll go a little higher. The tank circuit of the primary inductor and capacitor resonates at a fixed frequency depending on the inductance and capacitance values. This frequency of oscillation is inversely proportional to the product of the inductance and capacitance. To make things work, our primary side has a large capacitance and a small inductance. To match the same frequency, our secondary has a small capacitance (torroid) and a large inductance (coil). To further complicate the idea, power is fed to the primary coil at the same resonant frequency. The high frequency power is supplied by charging the capacitor until it reaches a voltage sufficient to breakdown air across a spark gap and the spark gap distance is adjusted so that the correct frequency is attained. 01/06/06 - Magnetic Card Emulator (This shows how people can hack a copy of your credit or ATM card - JWD) Magnetic stripe cards are used for many purposes today, from credit cards to security passes and room keys. This article doesn't intend to explain how to read the contents of a magnetic stripe card. If you're interested in that, see for example Magnetic stripe reader/writer. This article covers emulating magnetic stripe cards for academic purposes such as brute-forcing for an authorized card for a door lock. I have only emulated track 2 of the card, but there's no real obstacles to extending this to track 1 and 3 as well. The solenoid will transfer the pulses from the microprocessor to the magnetic head in the card reader. It needs to be put into the right position to be read. The easiest way to accomplish this is to cut a hole into any old real magnetic stripe card you might have around, and place the solenoid there. According to the iso standard for magnetic stripe cards, track 2 is the area between 0.353" and 0.463" from the edge of the card. You don't need to cut a hole all the way along the card since the magnetic head in the reader is only some quarter of an inch long. The solenoid core can be made from thin magnetic sheet-metal. The card itself is about 0.7mm thick. The solenoid core should preferably be slightly thinner so there's space for two layers of copper wire without the solenoid getting much thicker than the rest of the card. For this test I used a 0.5mm x 3mm x 45mm piece of steel, cut from a can, wrapping about 1m of 0.1mm copper wire onto the ends of that (see figure 2). The data for the stripe of the card is stored inside the PIC microcontroller. The code is prepared for adding more cards, selected using pins RB2 and RB3. Feel free to use the code as a base for your own magnetic card projects, but do give proper credits. 01/05/06 - Top Scientists Validating 'the Force' The Field tells the story of a group of frontier scientists who discovered that the Zero Point Field - an ocean of subatomic vibrations in the space between things - connects everything in the universe, much like the Force in Star Wars. The Field offers a radically new view of the way our world and our bodies work. The human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment, but a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast energy sea. The Field creates a picture of an interconnected universe and a new scientific theory which makes sense of ’supernatural ‘phenomena. The Field follows the life and work of physicists who seem to be on the verge of bringing about the same type of revolution that occurred exactly a century ago when quantum theory changed the face of physics forever. 01/05/06 - 5 hours to the Moon STAR Trek-style flights into space could become reality using a revolutionary form of propulsion, says a report out today. The US military is probing the possibility of Captain Kirk-style “warp speed” using a concept called hyperdrive. It would send craft through a new dimension and let them reach the moon in minutes. A round trip to Mars would take five hours instead of 2½ years, according to scientists. Their idea is to create an intense magnetic field that would produce an anti-gravity force and propel craft faster through space, New Scientist magazine reports. However sceptics say the sci-fi is still a long way from becoming fact. 01/05/06 - New Radar sees through 12 inches of concrete The new "Radar Scope" will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room. By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing, he said. The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring, Baranoski said. The device is likely to be fielded to the squad level, for use by troops going door to door in search of terrorists. The Radar Scope will give warfighters the capability to sense through a foot of concrete and 50 feet beyond that into a room, Baranoski explained. It will bring to the fight what larger, commercially available motion detectors couldn't, he said. Weighing just a pound and a half, the Radar Scope will be about the size of a telephone handset and cost just about $1,000, making it light enough for a soldier to carry and inexpensive enough to be fielded widely. The Radar Scope will be waterproof and rugged, and will run on AA batteries, he said. Proposals are expected this week for the new "Visi Building" technology that's more than a motion detector. It will actually "see" through multiple walls, penetrating entire buildings to show floor plans, locations of occupants and placement of materials such as weapons caches, Baranoski said. "It will give (troops) a lot of opportunity to stake out buildings and really see inside," he said. "It will go a long way in extending their surveillance capabilities." The device is expected to take several years to develop. Ultimately, service members will be able to use it simply by driving or flying by the structure under surveillance. 01/05/06 - 50 Best Firefox Extensions for Power Surfing There are hundreds of firefox extensions on the web. Which ones do you use? Here is my attempt to collect the 50 best and popular firefox extensions which make your browsing, downloading and navigation in Firefox as easy as possible, while harnessing the full power and features of Firefox. Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. The list has been classified on the basis of some broad categories. 01/05/06 - Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest AN ITALIAN judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed. The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist. Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case, but was overruled last month by the Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Righi was “abusing popular credulity”. Signor Cascioli’s contention - echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites - is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims. Signor Cascioli’s one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of “abuse of popular credulity” and “impersonation”, both offences under the Italian penal code. He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived “after the time of the hypothetical Jesus” and were therefore not reliable witnesses. Signor Cascioli maintains that early Christian writers confused Jesus with John of Gamala, an anti-Roman Jewish insurgent in 1st-century Palestine. Church authorities were therefore guilty of “substitution of persons”. The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius mention a “Christus” or “Chrestus”, but were writing “well after the life of the purported Jesus” and were relying on hearsay. “If Cascioli does not see the sun in the sky at midday, he cannot sue me because I see it and he does not,” Father Righi said. Signor Cascioli said that the Gospels themselves were full of inconsistencies and did not agree on the names of the 12 apostles. He said that he would withdraw his legal action if Father Righi came up with irrefutable proof of Christ’s existence by the end of the month. 01/05/06 - Pope says terrorism, nihilism and fundamentalism threaten peace In his homily, the pope said a "shock" of courage and faith in God was necessary to spread peace, and that everyone must work together to combat the threats to it. "It becomes ever more important to work together for peace when confronting the situations of injustice and violence that continue to oppress various parts of the world, those that are the new and most insidious threats to peace: terrorism, nihilism and fanatic fundamentalism," he said. Benedict said individuals and entire populations, international organizations like the United Nations as well as world powers must assume their responsibilities to promote values of justice, solidarity and peace in the world. 01/05/06 - DeTox therapy is a myth As a nation we spend millions on detox products, especially in the new year following post-Christmas guilt. But scientists are now saying detox remedies are a waste of money and a glass of water and an early night is far more beneficial. "There is a popular notion that we can speed up the elimination process by drinking fancy bottled water or sipping herbal teas, but this is just nonsense. "In fact, many of the detox diets and supplements really aren't that good for you, nor have they been properly tested." Professor Martin Wiseman, visiting professor of human nutrition, University of Southampton, added: "The detox fad - is an example of the capacity of people to believe in and pay for magic despite the lack of any sound evidence. 01/04/06 - Hydrosphere - Ocean Powered 500MW Hydroelectric Generator Sea Solar Power International of Baltimore, Maryland, a division of the Abell Foundation, is currently evaluating Portland, Oregon resident, Richard M. Dickson’s U.S. patent pending ocean powered hydroelectric generator invention for possible prototyping and eventual production. The invention is a new type of enclosed hydroelectric dam that works off pressure differentials in sea or deep lake water at great depths. Mr. Dickson refers to his invention as a “hydrosphere”, and claims it can generate up to 500 Megawatts of continuous, non-polluting, renewable energy out of sight in oceans or deep lakes. The concept was previously validated by the German firm of Howaldsdeutschewerke (HDW AG) of Kiel, Germany and Florida Hydro, Inc. of Palatka, Florida USA. The "hydrosphere" could eventually become a tremendous source of new electrical energy for the world, benefiting all nations with access to oceans or deep lakes; and dramatically lower the cost of generating electrical power worldwide. This would not only help replace fossil fuel burning power plants, which contribute significantly to global warming; but make electrical power cheap enough to make electrical vehicles extremely practical, thus reducing worldwide dependence upon oil. 01/04/06 - Plasma thruster tested for Mars mission The HDLT uses solar electricity from the sun to create a magnetic field through which hydrogen is passed to make a beam of plasma, powering ships through space. While the plasma thruster has a fraction of the power of the rockets that launch the space shuttle, it uses far less fuel and gets more thrust as a ratio of the fuel it burns, making it ideal for interplanetary missions. The physics behind the HDLT technology is based on the northern and southern aurorae, natural phenomena that occur when electrified gas released by the Sun hits the magnetic field of the Earth and creates a boundary of two plasma layers. Electrically charged particles pick up energy as they travel through the layers of different electrical properties, thereby creating thrust as they leave the spacecraft. The ANU thruster has the edge on rival technologies as it is simpler and has been proven to work with many propellants including hydrogen, a waste product of human habitation. “The HDLT is a beautiful piece of physics because it is so simple and has an almost infinite lifetime. It doesn’t need any moving parts, any electrodes and is purely based on naturally occurring physical phenomena,” Dr Charles added. 01/04/06 - Americans More Miserable than in Early 1990s Overall, the number of people reporting at least one significant negative life event increased to 92 percent from 88 percent in 1991, the last time the survey was done. Likewise, the total level of troubles grew by 15 percent. Individual problems were not evenly spread among the population, however. Troubles are greatest among those with low income and less education, younger adults, and families with a high child-to-adult dependency ratio (mostly unmarried mothers). The questions were based on social science research that tracks the impact of negative life events. "Those events are associated with and apparently lead to depression and anxiety as well as physical illnesses, such as heart attacks and increased infections," said study author Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey. The negative life events, though personal in nature, have ramifications throughout society, research shows. "Essentially, since experiencing more negative events makes individuals less well off, then, in the aggregate, having more individuals suffering more negative events means society is less well-off," Smith said. Research at the state and local level has connected negative life events with problems such as homicide, alcoholism, and suicide. 01/04/06 - Compressed Air Underground Battery for Wind Farms CAES technology uses off-peak wind turbine generated electricity to pump compressed air into an underground aquifer for use in later generation. The concept of using stored compressed-air energy to help generate electricity is more than 30 years old. Two plants currently exist-an 11-year-old plant in McIntosh, Ala., and a 23-year-old plant in Germany, both with the compressed air stored in caverns created by salt deposits. Wind turbines generate electricity which can flow directly to grid or, alternatively, power the site's air compressor bank. Compressors run at "off peak" times when wind happens to be blowing strongly, but regional electricity demand is low, driving air down into a subterranean cavern of sorts. Compressed air driven underground both dissolves in, and temporarily displaces, groundwater. The horizonatally displaced water is "contained" by surrounding aquitards, however, so the air remains under pressure for extended periods, ready to be let back up the pipes to the surface when needed. When air pressure is reduced, the previously displaced groundwater flows back toward the zone of lowered pressure, which is now under the "dome". This is the "battery-like" part of the design. Air flowing back up the pipes, toward the non-wind turbines, is pre-heated by the combustion of natural gas...Our reading of the design narrative indicates this heating is from in-situ' combustion, not requiring a heat exchanger..., further increasing the air's pressure, prior to it's passing through the turbine blade chambers. The hot compressed air turns the turbine blades just as would flowing water as it passes through a hydroelectric generator. The turbines turn dynamos that generate electricity for the regional grid at peak demand periods. 01/04/06 - Clusterf**k Nation - problems Compounding problems You can only introduce so much perversity into an economic system before distortions cripple it. From 2001 through 2005, consumer spending and residential construction had together accounted for 90 percent of the total growth in GDP, while over two-fifths of all private sector jobs created since 2001 were in housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage brokering. Much of the money spent did not really exist except as credit -- incomes as yet unearned, hallucinated liquidity, wished-for wealth, all based on the expectation that house values would continue to rise at 10 to 20 percent a year forever. It became a reckless racket, all predicated on sustaining an economy that had lost its other means for generating wealth -- foremost its infrastructure for making things besides suburban houses. What I foresee - If nothing like that happens, the first year of post-peak will express itself in turbulent oil markets. Fear of not getting enough will rule. Futures will be overbought and then dumped or shorted and then overbought again. This will at least increase the violence of the ratcheting effect in the markets. Overall I expect to see $100-a-barrel oil at some point this year. With the cratering of the housing bubble, the US economy has to fall on its ass. The global economy is likely to fall on its ass, too, since so much of it depends on the decisions of Americans to take out exotic loans for buying houses they can't afford. Large numbers of jobs will vanish in construction, remodeling, real estate sales, and the various mortgage rackets -- those things precisely related to the recent gains in GDP. The sheer falloff in new mortgages will send a tsunami through financial markets addicted to continuous supplies of new "money" to preserve the illusion of expansion. In Europe, we are beginning to see some of the first tectonic heavings over energy as Russia jerks poor Ukraine around on their natural gas shipments.....and much, much more at the attached link... 01/04/06 - More on the Patent Epidemic Teleflex sued KSR, and the companies are now locked in litigation. KSR's defense is simple: U.S. law does not allow patents for inventions that are "obvious." Nothing could be more obvious, KSR says in court filings, than a combination of "preexisting, off-the-shelf components" that each perform "exactly the same function" for which they were originally designed. In essence, KSR's argument is that Teleflex may as well have patented the combination of the refrigerator and the light bulb. Rodger D. Young, Teleflex's attorney, counters: "The fact that Device A and Device B exist does not make it...obvious that they should be put together." In an article in The National Law Journal last month, New York attorney Barry Schindler expressed the current patent-everything-in-sight mentality. Seizing on a recent ruling by a Patent Office administrative board that said method patents don't even need to make use of technology, he advised companies to "now seek U.S. patent rights for any unique business method covering every conceivable business operation, such as methods of billing clients, hiring employees, marketing products or service...or simply obtaining funding." Litigation-driven business decisions can waste resources and money. So can another strategy known as defensive patenting. To ward off claims of infringement from others, companies pump up their own patent portfolios. Cisco has gone from obtaining a few hundred patents annually to around 1,000. "A large part of that investment is to assure that if someone wants to assert patents against us, we will have some countervailing tools," says Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler. It's the patent world's equivalent of mutually assured destruction. Instead of suing, companies agree to license each other their intellectual property. Courts -- and patent examiners -- can't reject an invention as obvious unless they can point to specific references suggesting the elements could be combined. Those references are typically previous patents or technical literature. 01/03/06 - Microsoft recommends using this 'unofficial' patch for their sloppy software ZDNet is reporting on the latest dire pronouncements about the WMF vulnerability. The problem is so serious that security experts are urging IT firms to use the unofficial patch. Microsoft's current goal is to release the update on Tuesday." From the ZDNet article: "This is a very unusual situation -- we've never done this before. We trust Ilfak, and we know his patch works. We've confirmed the binary does what the source code said it does. We've installed the patch on 500 F-Secure computers, and have recommended all of our customers do the same. The businesses who have installed the patch have said it's highly successful. Vulnerability in Graphics Rendering Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution and this Article with caveats and you can download the patch HERE. 01/03/06 - Nano Dishwasher saves water This dishwasher loosens food residue from dishes using ultra-fine steam with a water droplet diameter of 1.5 nanometers (one billionth of a meter). It then washes away the residue by spraying high-pressurized water in sequence from nozzles at the top, bottom right and bottom left. As a result of its excellent cleaning ability, the appliance uses only 9.8 liters of water, the least amount of water in the industry, to wash 60 dishes, or dishes for seven people. Compared to washing by hand, it uses less electricity or gas as well as less water, resulting in a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 65 percent. A silver ion coating, which Hitachi adopted for the first time in the industry in 2004, is used to keep the inside sterilized regardless of temperature. Nano-titanium, which has a deodorant effect, is also used to further improve cleanliness. 01/03/06 - Beating CD anti-copy technology for your backups (An earlier post had several people reporting you could use a black marker to paint the outside rim of a 'protected' CD which would bypass the rootkit protection. This is an AUDIO file only, could not find it as text. - JWD) All Things Considered, December 23, 2005 · Bloggers recently revealed that Sony BMG had hidden invasive software on some of its CDs to protect against unauthorized copying. The software also monitored and controlled how people used music they bought legally -- and could potentially open computers to hackers. But users are finding ways around it. 01/03/06 - Refitting the old PC to run faster with Linux than the new one with Windows (I'm thinking this could be very cool for JUST WEB BASED ACTIVITIES, specifically browsing and email with another system with all the bells, whistles and huge programs for complex work options. - JWD)NY Newsday is running an article on fixing up your old (and recently replaced) computer with a quick and easy Linux install. Boy, are we gonna fix it. I can almost guarantee you it will run appreciably faster than your new unit. It won’t ever get clogged up with spyware. It will never crash. And it will come with all the software you’ll ever need, and if you need more, you can download it for free. A nice one-day project. The Linux install-of-choice is Damn Small Linux (DSL), a full Linux OS that occupies a tiny 50MB. So rather than throw away your jurassic PC now that you’ve got a shiny new holiday PC, consider reviving it with a little Linux. (via lifehacker.com) 01/03/06 - 50 Free online storage/download sites A list of 50 similar services that are absolutely free and require no e-mail registration to use. Included in the list are file size limits, download limits and the amount of time the file remains on the server for download. 01/02/06 - U.S. government draws up regulations for commercial space travel More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don't-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to pre-flight training for the crew. Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the "space-flight participant" - known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger - of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff. Legislation signed a year ago by President George W. Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury. "This means that the FAA has to wait for harm to occur or almost occur before it can impose restrictions, even against foreseeable harm," the proposal states. "Instead, Congress requires that space-flight participants be informed of the risks." Physical exams for passengers are recommended but will not be required, "unless a clear public safety need is identified," the FAA said in the proposed regulations. Passengers also would have to be trained on how to respond during emergencies, including the loss of cabin pressure, fire and smoke, as well as how to leave the vehicle safely. 01/02/06 - 'Diagnosis before symptoms' hope Scientists are working on a method to enable doctors to identify disease even before symptoms appear. To date, it has not been possible to identify pre-symptomatic infections. But a team at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory found distinct patterns can occur in the immune system in the earliest stages of infection. The intensive care unit was identified as a place where patients were more likely to develop sepsis - a severe illness caused by overwhelming infection of the bloodstream by toxin-producing bacteria which can cause organ failure and death. The scientists looked for a set of possible markers in the immune system associated with the earliest stages of the condition. The study showed that those patients who went on to develop sepsis displayed a distinct immune system pattern according to their age and sex. The work showed that, in principle, one can predict the onset of disease. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has filed a patent on the principle that pre-detection is possible and can be applied to infections acquired naturally, or through work in military, counter-terrorist or public health fields. 01/02/06 - Thought Provoking! What is your Dangerous Idea? The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true? "Fantastically stimulating...It's like the crack cocaine of the thinking world.... Once you start, you can't stop thinking about that question." - BBC Radio 4 01/02/06 - Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded. 01/02/06 - Brian claims verified accurate predictions (Link courtesy of Smywolf) Over the past year alone I have had over 650 of my dreams come true...yes...over 650. I do not know how nor why they do, but they do! Most dreams seem to come true anywhere from 1 hour to 6 months after I have had the dream, on average about a week. This was very scary at first...but I have learned to live with it...and posting them on this site actually makes dealing with these dreams a lot easier. Each day after work, I update this website with scanned copies of my dream drawings from the previous night. I try and have this completed no later than 5PM EST (GMT-4) everyday. Also, to make this clear, my dream predictions are not just some sort of vague random guessing like so-call psychics forecast, I provide actual time, date and place of most events to come, and this all comes from the many dreams I've had the previous night...some time's I get the translations wrong...but the dream drawings are always correct. 01/02/06 - Beetle Sports Photonic Crystal Coat (This might be relevant to the 'elyton covers' the late Victor Grebennikov wrote me about with regard to his gravity deflection experiments. - JWD) Why are some coleoptera beetles blue? Because light striking the beetle's external hard parts undergoes destructive interference. Electron microscope pictures of the beetle's scaly cuticle, online at Physics News Graphics, help to explain that each scale is made of alternating layers of pure chitin (high index of refraction) and mixtures of chitin and air (low index of refraction). The resulting structure is a photonic crystal: because of wave interference, light of certain frequencies are excluded. In this case blue light is forbidden from being absorbed by the animal's shell; all blue light is reflected while other frequencies are absorbed in the cuticle, and the creature consequently has a blue appearance. According to Jean Pol Vigneron at the University of Namur in Belgium, lessons learned from the beetle scale's iridescence might be applied to the manufacture of paint, clothes, paper and in simplifying the kinds of windows and windshields that currently employ interference effects. The beetle's optics might also help in designing micro-fabricated displays in which different colors could be obtained through the clever reflection, rather than by emission, of light. See Grebennikov Article on Gravity shielding 01/02/06 - Warning of 'anti-Semitic tsunami' Globalisation had led some people to wrongly see Israel as the cause of all the world's conflicts, he told BBC Radio 4's Sunday Programme. Holocaust denial and hatred of Jews were circulating widely in best-selling books and prime time TV, he warned. 01/02/06 - Scary paper on anti-semitics, very long, very detailed (This was sent to my email by a friend who had read the 'What happened to our Beloved United States?' article posted below. My worldviews regarding politics and the complexities behind it all are very primitive and simplistic so I was astounded by this website. Obviously grinding some personal axes and several errors that jump out at you but quite fascinating nonetheless. And with the Iranian president disclaiming the holocaust and insisting that nations who promote it be willing to set aside land as repayment and out of guilt. See Latest rant from Iran Its just way, way too much for me. My world is ideas that lead to experiments that lead to technology that lead to machines to help the world. All this stuff is far beyond my pay scale but some might find it of interest. - JWD) 01/01/06 - New heating system, virtually no monthly costs Ted Boice of Manchester, the former head building engineer at Franklin Elementary, has invented and constructed a heater that keeps his 1,060-square-foot house toasty-warm with virtually no monthly heating costs. Boice essentially gets a double bang out of his fireplace by using it to superheat water, which also heats the house. Boice's system, which he calls "The Heatalator," is constructed of carefully welded copper and steel pipes. Here's how it works. # A pump connected to a 140-gallon water storage tank sends cool water from the bottom of the tank into 1-inch steel coils that resemble an old-fashioned radiator lying flat. The water-filled coils sit beneath burning wood in Boice's fireplace. # The thermostat, which he's dubbed the "Aquastat," switches on when the water temperature reaches 160 degrees. The hot water then flushes into the top of the 140-gallon tank. At the same time, the circulation pump sends more cool water into the coils, repeating the heating process. The water can stay as hot as 140 to 150 degrees depending on how hot the fire is burning and how long it stays lit. # A pair of fans in the fireplace circulates the fire-heated air throughout the 1,060-square-foot house. Boice built two-ducted fans in the inlets. The fans automatically turn on when the air temperature hits 90 and automatically turn off when it dips below 90 degrees. # On even the coolest days, Boice heats the house around the clock, though a fire is burning at most in two four-hour spans. When the fire isn't burning, the house is warmed by the hot water, which acts like a battery. The 140-gallon tank sits in a utility room in the center of the house and heat radiates from the tank, making the utility room as hot as 90 degrees. # If needed, Boice runs a small room fan to help move the super-heated air from the utility room throughout the house. The Aquastat and the blowing fans insure an indoor temperature between 70 to 75 degrees, whether or not a fire is heating the coils. The conserved hot water heats the retired engineer's home for up to 20 hours. The cost to heat and provide electricity for his home runs about $57 during the coldest months, he said. Unlike a traditional heating system, which draws in cold air from the outside, Boice's Heatalator uses static air, recycled by the fans. This self-sustained recycled air makes for less temperature fluctuation during the cold months. Despite the success of his heating system, Boice said he has no intention of patenting it. "I didn't build it to be a pretty thing, so it probably couldn't be manufactured," Boice said. "But the concept is pretty easy to follow. People could most likely build their own just by looking at pictures of it." 01/01/06 - Best UFO photos of 2005 (Seems like these UFO 'proofs' are always just photos. Blurry, fuzzy photos at that. I often wonder if there is some kind of energy field around them which might fuzz up the light to result in poor photographs. Of all the photos provided on the page, I thought the cylindrical one was the most interesting as it reminded me of a drawing Hal Crawford of Dallas had created of one of Tesla's ideations as well as the vimana type ship as in 'Dweller on Two Planets' from 1886. The propulsion method described in the Dweller book was based on something called the 'night side forces' of Nature. With cryptic comments such as 'night is as pregnant as day' which I always thought referred to a band of frequencies which directly couple with gravity. These forces allowed them to do wonderful things when applied in the form of machinery, from transmutation to healing to gravity control and conversion of said forces to energy they could use to provide heating, communication and motive power. - JWD) 01/01/06 - DIY Funeral Site (We've seen mausoleums for peoples ashes, conversion of the ashes to carbon which is then pressed into diamonds, mixing the DNA with a living plant like a tree that grows as a memorial, sending the ashes out into space, now some folks just want to go natural and feed the worms. - JWD) A family in St. George, Vt., wants to turn 50 acres of undeveloped land into a natural burial ground for do-it-yourself funerals. One of the people proposing the plan, Lisa Carlson, said families could actually dig a grave or pick a spot to leave cremated remains -- no caskets, no concrete vaults and no embalming. "The idea of a garden park and nature reserve just makes so much sense," she said. The town select board has the final say on what happens to the land. No decision has been made yet, but the board's chair said the land might be better suited for commercial or residential use. Plans for similar natural burial grounds also are being considered in California, Ohio and Wisconsin. 01/01/06 - the Ultimate Holistic Anti-Virus Software (This sounds a lot like GoBack and System Restore software - JWD) Imagine anti-virus software for handhelds that's less than the size of a typical PowerPoint file, needs no yearly subscription, yet it can protect mobile phones, PDAs, iPods or any other smart devices from not only known viruses but also all future unknown viruses and other malware. Rudra, according to Bhaskar, "is a breakthrough anti-virus technology based on the intention of malicious codes." "This technology not only protects a device from known viruses but also from any unknown malicious codes (malware) which includes viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, keyloggers and hackers. Thus the technology offers a holistic solution." The beauty of this technology, claims Bhaskar, is not only the fact that it is thin and that it can protect a handheld device from virus intrusions through any medium -- including Bluetooth -- "but since the technology protects a device even from future unknown viruses, the need for regular updates -- which increasingly encroaches on the limited memory space of handhelds -- as well as the need for yearly subscription, is removed." Rudra's method is simple: It takes a snapshot of a device in complete detail in its malware-free state and continuously monitors system and file changes. New files, changes in configuration, changes in system control files and changes in critical application program files are all evaluated for potential threats. Any change in the system state that represents a potential threat is immediately acted upon. Such surveillance then not only removes the potential threat but also restores the system to its original malware-free state, thus protecting devices against unknown viruses too. On the other hand, says Bhaskar, Rudra offers a fundamentally different approach to virus and malware protection. "It identifies and removes all viruses from personal computers in their signature-unknown state," said Bhaskar, "and preventing any unauthorized program from executing on a device." "And the handheld version of Rudra would be out by September by when we shall also be in a position to launch versions for Linux and Macintosh-based PCs," said Bhardwaj. 01/01/06 - Question - When does 'sharing' become 'proselytizing'? Won't believers (of all faiths and cults), EVER learn that many CHOOSE to not share their beliefs or even fanaticism? Keep your books and tracts promoting your chosen beliefs, unless you are specifically asked to 'share' them with others. Please keep your beliefs to yourself and your fellow believers. Thank you. - JWD 01/01/06 - Successful liquid fuel-powered Scramjet The vehicle achieved a world first on Dec. 10 at an altitude of 63,000 feet -- becoming the first air-breathing, liquid hydrocarbon fuel-powered scramjet engine to fly, the Office of Naval Research reported. The approximately 106-inch long, 11-inch diameter, missile-shaped vehicle raced at 5,300 feet per second -- Mach 5.5 -- for 15 seconds before a controlled splashdown into the Atlantic Ocean, the statement said. The overall goal of HyFly is to flight-test key technologies enabling a long range, high-speed cruise missile that can cruise at speeds up to Mach 6. 01/01/06 - U.S. prepares Iran strike The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media. The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week quoted "NATO intelligence sources" who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. The German news agency DDP cited "Western security sources" to claim that CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkey's premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. Goss, who visited Ankara and met Erdogan on Dec. 12, was also reported to have to have asked for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation. 01/01/06 - Rain Gardens to reduce pollution A study posted today on ES&T’s Research ASAP website confirms the effectiveness of rain gardens, an increasingly popular-and aesthetically pleasing-technique for reducing the flow of common pollutants after storms in cities and suburbs. Authors Michael Dietz and John Clausen of the University of Connecticut also show how a simple design modification can enhance rain gardens’ ability to treat the polluted rainwater flowing off roofs. The authors hope that their results will help contribute to the growing acceptance of rain gardens by developers and homeowners. A rain garden, in its simplest form, is a shallow depression in the earth, landscaped with permeable soil and hardy grasses, shrubs, or trees and covered by a thin layer of mulch. Rain gardens collect the storm-water runoff from impervious surfaces, such as roofs and driveways, and allow it to percolate into the ground instead of draining into sewers or waterways. The storm-water runoff from a house roof or a parking lot may not seem like a major threat to water quality. “People think of pollution as something coming from a factory or a sewage treatment plant, dumping directly into a river,” says Dietz. But runoff carries the signature of the urbanized areas through which it flows, including nitrogen and phosphorus compounds from atmospheric deposition and fertilizers, as well as metals, oils, and other particulate matter. The volume and velocity of runoff from a heavy rain can also overwhelm urban sewer systems. According to the U.S. EPA, more than half of the rainwater that falls on a typical city block, one with 75% or more impervious cover, will leave as runoff. To encourage the bacteria in the soil to convert the nitrates into nitrogen gas via the denitrification process, the authors modified the design of their garden to allow water to pool in the bottom. Saturation by water is expected to reduce oxygen levels in the soil, Dietz explains, creating anaerobic conditions favorable for denitrification. The simple modification produced an 18% decrease in total nitrogen levels compared with the control garden. 01/01/06 - Plastic Found in 95% of Dead Birds Thousands of seabirds are being killed each year after a massive rise in plastics pollution in the North Sea, according to a new report. Studies on the bodies of 600 fulmars washed up on beaches revealed that 95 per cent had plastic litter in their stomachs - with an average of 40 pieces of plastic per bird. One fulmar had 1,600 pieces of plastic in its guts, says the Save the North Sea project, which was set up by volunteers and professional organisations in all countries with North Sea coastlines. Fulmars - gull-like, tube-nosed birds with a massive colony on St Kilda - are affected because they mistake discarded plastic for jellyfish floating on the sea's surface. The south-east area of the North Sea - around the Channel exit to German Bight - is the worst-affected and plastics pollution is not only killing birds but also putting off bathers, contributing to beach clean-up costs and causing fouled propellers and blocked water intakes. Mark Grantham, of the British Trust for Ornithology, said yesterday: "Plastics pollution is a chronic problem in the North Sea. Heaven knows where some of this plastic comes from. They've found everything from balloons to shotgun cartridges in the birds' stomachs. But the commonest is beads of raw plastic before it is formed." Fulmars, which are small albatrosses, have been breeding on St Kilda for centuries. They spread throughout northern Scotland in the 19th century and to England, Ireland and Wales by 1930. Fulmars lead long lives, with many reaching 40 and some even living to 100. 01/01/06 - Personal Note - In a related anecdote, a friend of mine in Dallas had a colonics business. He told me about 20 years ago to NEVER cook food in plastic wrap, that he had many clients who did eat commercially packaged sandwiches and other food items, in the plastic wrapper. That the plastic molecules are superheated by hot vapor from the food and on cooling are ABSORBED into the food. My friend says he frequently pulled out long, stringy pieces of plastic during the colonic session. Since then, I have never eaten any food still in its plastic wrapper, from burritos to sandwiches. Just take it out of the package, wrap a napkin around it or place it on a napkin and cover with another napkin, then heat it. I had noticed food cooked in the plastic wrap tasty like it had chemicals and on cooling would harden up much more than just plain food. - JWD Future News/Links