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01/30/08 - Seadog Wave Pump Exceeds Epectations The SEADOGTM pump captures ocean-wave energy to pump large volumes of seawater, consuming no fuel or electricity. The pump uses buoyancy to convert wave energy to mechanical energy. The main components of the pump include a buoyancy chamber (the lower cage in the picture, buoyancy block (yellow object), piston assembly (center of upper chamber), piston shaft, piston cylinder, and intake and exhaust valves. When positioned in the water the buoyancy block (filled with air) floats within the buoyancy chamber, moving up and down in relation to the ocean waves and swells. The buoyancy block is connected to the piston shaft which in-turn moves the piston assembly through the piston cylinder. As the buoyancy block moves down in the trough of a wave it draws the piston downward through the piston cylinder. The downward movement draws water into the piston cylinder through the intake valve filling the piston cylinder chamber. As the next wave lifts the buoyancy block the water within the piston cylinder is under pressure and is expelled through the exhaust valve (into the air in the picture). Each cycle of the buoyancy block rising and falling, drawing in and expelling water, is called a stroke. Each stroke of the piston causes the water to be pumped from the piston cylinder in a regular manner. - Source 01/30/08 - Drug-name mix-ups getting worse Kid given schizophrenia drug Zyprexa instead of Zyrtec for allergies. The rate of drug name mix-ups has more than doubled since 2004, the U.S. Pharmacopeia said in a report Tuesday. The group, which regulates the generic names of drugs and advises pharmaceutical companies, reviewed more than 26,000 records and identified 1,470 unique drugs involved in errors due to similar brand or generic names. "Together, these drug names contributed to more than 3,170 pairs - nearly double the 1,750 product pairs appearing on USP's 2004 list," the organization said in a statement. "According to this report's findings, 1.4 percent of the errors resulted in patient harm, including seven that may have caused or contributed to patient deaths." The top 10 drugs sold in the United States in 2006 all made the mix-up list, including cholesterol drug Lipitor, heart drugs Toprol and Norvasc, antidepressant Lexapro, stomach acid pill Nexium and asthma drug Singulair. The USP researchers said 519 facilities reported on 176,409 errors in 2006. "The percentage of harmful errors has remained above 1 percent for more than seven years," they said. - Source 01/30/08 - Unwinding the Cosmos The presence of the golden ratio as an organizing principle in torsion physics led the team of Haramein and Rauscher to arrive at a Unified Field Theory that connects black holes to the structure of an atom. Their theory proposes that an atom is formed from the pumping or "breathing" of gravity in the space vacuum between the shape of a cube (dual tetrahedrons) and an octahedron, forming the simplest possible harmonically oscillating structure. As these two shapes oscillate, they pass through an icosahedron (or its dual dodecahedron) to form a golden spiral. Space is then seen as being organized into a polarized structured vacuum, called a Schwarzchild lattice, organized into 120 tiny black holes, each in its own "cell" of the lattice. Each cell is itself organized as a 12-faced pentagonal dodecahedron (or icosahedron). The Haramein-Rauscher atomic model is then used to explain each cell as a harmonically oscillating cubeoctahedron that passes through the Schwartzchild dodecahedron in the space lattice (centered on a tiny black hole). This pumping action creates an electromagnetic Coriolis Effect and double torus identical to a miniature spiral galaxy or hurricane. From the torquing edge or "event horizon" of the black hole in each cell of the space lattice, resonant atomic structures can form depending on the number of particles or atomic weight of different atoms. Of all the known elements, one particular atom, carbon-12, is more stable and resonant than any other element, accounting for its use as the international standard for atomic weight. In fact, carbon-12 resonates so well that it easily bonds with itself and other small atoms to form polypeptide amino acid chains and DNA molecules capable of evolving into the wide variety of water crystals we know as life. From the micro to the macro, torsion physics describes everything as a double torus of orthogonal (or "right-angled") gravitational and electromagnetic forces that together spin off resonant harmonic structure at the perfectly balanced event horizon between them. Based on this theoretical model, some scientists are calling for increased funding and research to find ways of engineering the torsion field. Nicola Tesla was the first to suggest this more than a hundred years ago. In 2001, German scientist Dr. Konstantin Meyl reproduced Tesla's wireless electricity experiments using a simple demonstration kit he built consisting of a dual-coil transmitter and matching receiver. He found that as the frequency was increased on the transmitter, scalar components were produced that tunneled over to the receiver to light an LED. Sold as a simple demonstration kit to more than fifty universities, the apparatus not only proved that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly, it also showed that scalar information could not be blocked by a shielded Faraday cage. More stunning than this, Meyl found that the scalar born information traveled more than 1.5 times the speed of light, confirming Tesla's own experimental results. (via zpenergy.com) - Source 01/30/08 - Sedentary life 'speeds up ageing' A study of twins found those who were physically active during their leisure time appeared biologically younger than their sedentary peers. The researchers found key pieces of DNA called telomeres shortened more quickly in inactive people. It is thought that could signify faster cellular ageing. An active lifestyle has been linked to lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. However, the latest research suggests that inactivity not only makes people more vulnerable to disease, but may actually speed up the ageing process itself. The King's team studied 2,401 white twins, asking them to fill out questionnaires on their level of physical activity, and taking a blood sample from which DNA was extracted. They particularly focused on telomeres, the repeat sequences of DNA that sit on the ends of chromosomes, protecting them from damage. As people age, their telomeres become shorter, leaving cells more susceptible to damage and death. Examining white blood cells from the immune system in particular, the researchers found that, on average, telomeres lost 21 component parts - called nucleotides - every year. But men and women who were less physically active in their leisure time had shorter leukocyte telomeres compared to those who were more active. The average telomere length in those who took the least amount of exercise - 16 minutes of physical activity a week - was 200 nucleotides shorter than those who took the most exercise - 199 minutes of physical activity a week, such as running, tennis or aerobics. The most active people had telomeres of a length comparable to those found in inactive people who were up to 10 years' younger, on average. The researchers said: "Our results show that adults who partake in regular physical activity are biologically younger than sedentary individuals." - Source 01/30/08 - Video - $1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera A simple little trick to help you keep your camera steady: $1 Image Stabilizer. DIY pocket device to help you take sharper, steadier photos. It eliminates vertical shake and greatly reduces horizontal shake without need of hauling a klutzy tripod wherever you want to take photos. Very slick! (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 01/30/08 - 50 years of Life Tips I’m turning 50 next week. So I thought I’d take the opportunity here to list 50 things I’ve learned in 50 years-truths gleaned from experience and the words of others that guide, inspire and sometimes haunt me: 6. The most valuable thing to have is a good reputation, and it’s neither hard nor expensive to acquire one: Be fair. Be honest. Be trustworthy. Be generous. Respect others. / 14. It’s not “political correctness” that dictates that we try not to insult others’ beliefs and identities. It’s common decency. / 15. It may not feel like it, but it’s good luck when you have people at home and at work who aren’t afraid to tell you when you’re wrong. / 22. Anyone who judges you by the kind of car you drive or shoes you wear isn’t someone worth impressing. / 24. If you’re in a conversation and you’re not asking questions, then it’s not a conversation, it’s a monologue....and more! - Source 01/30/08 - Disable Windows "Unused Icons" Balloon If you're sick of Windows taskbar popup balloons prompting you about unused icons on your desktop, fear not-you can shut those down easily. The How To Geek explains that when you uncheck the "Run Desktop cleanup wizard every 60 days" box in your desktop items dialog, you're good to go with one less irritating popup stealing your attention. Remember, using the free TweakUI you can disable all taskbar balloon popups indefinitely. - Source 01/30/08 - Pill for Reversing Autism Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry -- and then "cure" them using the same techniques. The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called "focusing" that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers. It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects. - Source 01/30/08 - The Miracle of ICE from HEAT (Jun, 1939) In actual operation, the non-mechanical refrigerator uses a coil within the refrigerating chamber. If such a refrigerator were to be manually operated, by pouring the refrigerating material into the opening to the coil, outside the refrigerator, and using air as an evaporator, it would look like Figure No. 1, in which the more common elements of alcohol and air are used. The continued evaporation within the coil would soon cool it to an extent where it would freeze ice cubes in the enclosed trays and keep the whole refrigerating chamber cool. The first step in the practical process, therefore, is to reclaim the alcohol, which is done in the commercial refrigerators by means of an absorber which washes the alcohol out of the vapor and precipitates it in a mixture of water, as in Figure 2. It has been said, however, that hydrogen is a much more efficient gas in which to do the evaporating than air. It is not as free or inexpensive as air, however, so that a closed circuit must be provided for it. In the practical refrigerator, after the alcohol has been washed out of the mixture with water, the hydrogen is re-conveyed to the start of the circuit, as shown in Figure 3. This action is automatic, because the mixture of alcohol and hydrogen is heavier than the hydrogen alone. Hence, the mixture tends to flow down into the absorber, and the released hydrogen tends to rise again to the beginning of the circuit. - Source 01/30/08 - Sound waves snuff fire In 1857, Irish scientist John Tyndall recognized that sound waves could extinguish flames. Now, scientists hope that phenomena could lead to the development of new fire extinguishers that would be useful, say, in a spacecraft or terrestrially to avoid water damage from sprinklers. First though, they need to figure out why exactly sound can snuff fire. Most likely, the sound wave causes a drop in pressure that extinguishes the flame. From Scientific American: In 2004 Dmitriy Plaks and several of his fellow students at the University of West Georgia tested whether sound waves can douse fires in hopes of using sound to extinguish flames in a spacecraft. They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback's "How you remind me" was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out, according to results published in 2005 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. - Source 01/30/08 - Inflatable Solar Collector - July 1961 Rocketing into space in a canister the size of a teacup, a solar collector will billow out to a conical shape with a metalized Mylar reflector that is seven feet in diameter. The sun’s rays striking the reflector are focused onto a collector. These rays will be transformed into heat energy which then may be used to power various electrical and mechanical instruments in space. Under tests by the G.T. Schjeldahl Co., Northfield, Minn., the collector is held to precise dimension by a rim inflated to five pounds per square inch of pressure. / (Also shown is a modern version of an inflatable and very cheap solar cone. - JWD) - Source 01/30/08 - Brattleboro, Vermont to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney (Wouldn't it be great if EVERY state did this? - JWD) Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont. The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning. Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001. Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury - lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq. He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war. Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys. "Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive. "This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative," Daims said. "People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel." He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town. The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities." The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..." - Source 01/30/08 - Electric Glove for Police Stuns Victims With 1,500 Volts (Sep, 1935) MORE punch than can be found in a box-glove is contained in a new electric glove invented by Cirilo Diaz of Cuba for use by police while handling rough characters or in quelling riots. Persons contacted by an officer wearing the glove receive a 1,500-volt shock, sufficient to remove all traces of fight. A half-pound battery worn on the belt supplies the power, all wiring being concealed beneath the coat. Police officials in New York where the device was first demonstrated, were favorably impressed by its effectiveness. / (This is an early version of the taser but even better, much like the electric glove effect used in the James Bond movie 'Die Another Day'. - JWD) - Source 01/30/08 - 25 Million songs free to Download After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs. With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks. The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music - that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available. The service will use the “peer-to-peer” network, which contains not just hit songs but rarities and live tracks from the world’s leading artists. - Source 01/30/08 - Find answers using a Decision Tree Decision Trees are excellent tools for helping you to choose between several courses of action. They provide a highly effective structure within which you can lay out options and investigate the possible outcomes of choosing those options. They also help you to form a balanced picture of the risks and rewards associated with each possible course of action. Decision trees provide an effective method of Decision Making because they: * Clearly lay out the problem so that all options can be challenged * Allow us to analyze fully the possible consequences of a decision * Provide a framework to quantify the values of outcomes and the probabilities of achieving them * Help us to make the best decisions on the basis of existing information and best guesses. As with all Decision Making methods, decision tree analysis should be used in conjunction with common sense... - Freemind Freeware - Source 01/28/08 - Cleveland death ray of 1934 REPORTED to have tremendous military possibilities, a successful death ray machine is said to have been invented, after lengthy experiments, by a Cleveland scientist. A partial description of the machine’s construction and operating principles was recently offered at a session of the National Inventors’ Congress at Omaha, Nebraska. Privileged witnesses to demonstrations of the machine declared that experiments were successful to a startling degree. Dogs, cats and rabbits were killed instantly, their blood turning to water as the ray was turned upon them. It is reported that the machine has been suppressed by the government until such time as it may be needed as a defensive weapon. - Source 01/28/08 - Bubble-busting sounds could keep chips cool Sound waves can boost the efficiency of liquid cooling techniques by nearly 150%, a feat that may help keep hardworking computer chips and other components from overheating in future. Current computer cooling solutions, such as fans and heat sinks, will have difficulty keeping more powerful microchips cool in future. But researchers in the US have shown how a relatively inefficient method - liquid cooling - can be improved dramatically with the use of sound waves. In experiments, the researchers placed an acoustic driver - essentially a speaker - sitting opposite from the heated surface, with cooling fluid in-between. They found that projecting just a small amount of sound energy, at frequencies near 1 kilohertz, across the fluid was enough to do dislodge the gathering bubbles. This increased the amount of heat that could be dissipated by as much as 147%. The best results were achieved when the distance between the acoustic driver and the heated surface was just a few millimetres, which is good news for applications in which space is a premium. "The underwater jets solution is effective, but this way is more compact, requires less power, and is, well, more elegant," Glezer says. - Source 01/28/08 - Wonderlube - Super Engine Oil Additive Using Wonderlube, your car could run without oil or water! 1. Restore engine power / 2. Save fuel up to 25% / 3. Protect metal surfaces of the engine / 4. Prolongs time between oil changes / 5. Minimizes emission of harmful gases and smoke / 6. In the even of accident, your car or cycle cold run 1 hour without lube or water / 7. Prevents overheating, maintains cooler temperature / 8. Quieter and smoother running engine. - Source 01/28/08 - Aerogas Power Injector for economical, pollution-free Motoring Filipino Scientist Victor G.Ayco has successfully invented a high tech engine device that enhances efficient engine performance; eliminates smoke belching,and requires less fuel consumption.The device called Aerogas Power Injector is the result of Ayco’s 15 years of research and experimentation.It was patented on Dec. 11, 1985,and is now available in the market through Enegy Philipines Inc,” Ayco said.Aerogas Power Injector is a chemical catalysts in an engine device that is activated chemically during air and fuel intake, harnessing the potential elements from the air to produce 98 percent to 100 percent combustion efficiecy of fuel in the combustion chamber of an engine. According to Ayco, Aerogas Power Injector as a catalyst converts ordinary nitrogen in the atmosphere(non-combustible air ) into combustible nitrogas and serves as gasoline and diesel additive and gaseous form for efficient engine combustion. When complete combustion is attained carbons are burned and converted into extra power. Fuel additive can restore fuel efficiency from 20 percent to 40 percent. Aerogas Power Injector works on the chemical process by sucking air composed of 78 percent nitrogen, 20 percent oxygen and 3 percents others, then converting it into active elements ( nitrogen base elements) which react with the elements of the fuel (hydrocarbons ) during air intake process. When these elements reacted with the hydrocarbons of the fuel , 98 percent to 100 percent comstion is made possible. Aerogas Power Injector , an advanced engineering design can increase engine power from 60 percent , increase mileage from 2 to 4 kilometers a liter. It cuts down maintenance costs by 50 percent by prolonging the lifespan of spark/glow plugs, as well as decreasing frequency on tune-ups and change oil. - Source 01/28/08 - Flexible Waterproof Compact Keyboard This is a full-size PC keyboard made from some kind of synthetic rubber or soft plastic. You can roll it up and tuck it into your knapsack. It is unaffected by spills, and you can wash it off under the faucet. Twist it, roll it, fold it, soak it. The all new Flexible Full Sized Keyboard from Adesso is a revolutionary approach to truly taking PC computing anywhere! It’s water resistant, flexible, and dust and contaminant proof. The keyboard is great for use in industrial environments, hospitals, libraries, and marine and boating applicationsThe silicon based material is impervious to almost anything and, it’s fun to use! - Source 01/28/08 - Lip-Reading Computer Interface In the Works Scientists from England's University of East Anglia's School of Computing Sciences and Surrey University are working on software that can translate face and lip movements into words. They've already built the software for tracking face and lip movements. Now all they need is a complete database of all possible combinations, and what they mean. A working prototype of their LIP-READING COMPUTER could be ready in two years. The interface could be used for giving commands to a computer even in noisy environments. - Source 01/28/08 - Gadgets That Listen and Obey "Vlingo's service lets people talk naturally, rather than making them use a limited number of set phrases. Dave Grannan, the company's chief executive, demonstrated the Vlingo Find application by asking his phone for a song by Mississippi John Hurt (try typing that with your thumbs), for the location of a local bakery and for a Web search for a consumer product. It was all fast and efficient. Vlingo is designed to adapt to the voice of its primary user, but I was also able to use Mr. Grannan's phone to find an address. The Find application is in the beta test phase at AT&T and Sprint. Consumers who use certain cellphones from those companies can download the application from vlingo.com." - Source 01/28/08 - Microchips Everywhere: A Vision of the Future Here are three visions of the not-so-distant future: 1.) Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items - and, by extension, consumers - wherever they go, from a distance. 2.) A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them. 3.) In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets - all the while, silently reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives. - Source 01/28/08 - Multitasking is Destroying Our Ability to Focus "Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires - the constant switching and pivoting - energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on... studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy." - Source 01/28/08 - Alzheimer's IR helmet therapy hope An experimental helmet is being tested by scientists as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. It delivers low levels of infra-red light, which researchers at the University of Sunderland, believe may stimulate the growth of brain cells. Tests in mice showed it improved learning ability and a study in humans is due to begin in the summer. Current treatments for Alzheimer's delay progression of the disease but cannot reverse memory loss. The infra-red therapy was first developed to treat cold sores. But when researchers studied how it worked, they found it stimulated growth of cells and may have applications in other conditions. In tests in people with dementia using infra-red lasers, eight out of nine people showed some improvement, said Dr Gordon Dougal, a GP and director of Virulite, a medical research company based in County Durham. However, in order to safely deliver the treatment through the scalp, he developed a helmet which bathes the brain in low levels of infra-red light and would only need to be worn for 10 minutes a day. - Source 01/28/08 - An octopus wants to eat the West What’s 3,500 feet wide, 6,055 miles long and 2.9 million acres big? That’s wider than Hoover Dam, bigger than Yellowstone National Park and almost three times as long as the Mississippi River. This behemoth goes by the name of the West-Wide Energy Corridor, and if you live in the West it could soon devour a landscape near you. This huge new system of energy corridors was mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. You remember 2005: That was when newly re-elected President Bush claimed a “mandate” and Congress was controlled by Republicans. Section 368 of the law directed the Secretaries of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy and Interior to designate corridors on federal land in 11 Western states for oil, gas and hydrogen pipelines and electrical power lines. These agencies have now released the federal West-wide Energy Corridor Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, a three-volume document totaling well over 1,000 pages. These new energy corridors - averaging six-tenths of a mile wide - will fracture a landscape that is already a maze of hairline cracks - the lines made by highways, railroads and the current, comparatively delicate energy rights-of-way. These existing corridors have been enough to severely fragment habitat in the West, interfering with the movements of pronghorn, elk and bison, denying undisturbed wild areas to wolves and grizzly bears, and weakening the ecological health of deserts, grasslands and forests. The West-Wide Energy Corridor, if enacted, would be a death sentence for many wildlife populations. The corridors it outllnes would cross national wildlife refuges, national recreation areas, national monuments and national parks. One tentacle would split the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming; another would run the length of California1s Owens Valley between Sequoia and Death Valley national parks; another would cut from Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado to Bandelier National Monument near Santa Fe. - Source 01/28/08 - GM's breakthrough to make Cellulosic Ethanol Coskata's process goes way beyond using switch grass. It can use any kind of agricultural waste. Even more importantly, it can use a lot of municipal waste, i.e., most the stuff we're dumping into landfills. In fact, it can use anything that has carbon in it, including used tires. For every unit of energy used to make this ethanol, it will generate up to 7.7 times that amount of energy. On a well-to-wheel analysis, it reduces CO2 emissions by up to 84% compared with gasoline. Coskata's process also uses less than a gallon of water to make a gallon of ethanol compared to three gallons or more for other processes. And here's the best news of all. GM and Coskata say they can produce a gallon of this ethanol for less than $1 a gallon. They'll have a pilot plant up and running by the end of the year, and the plan is to go into mass production by 2011. - Source 01/28/08 - Shopping with Humor HEMA is a Dutch department store. Take a look at HEMA's product page. You can't order anything and it's in Dutch but . . . just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer. - Source 01/28/08 - Bug Labs - the Lego of Gadgets BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/web community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don't define the final products - you do. BUG makes it fun and easy to build any gadget you can imagine. Build familiar things like digital cameras and GPS locators or create new devices like a LoCamMotion or a GeoPhotoShooter or an Accel-o-Mailer or ... the list is endless! - Source 01/28/08 - Stores can't set credit card minimum There are many convenience stores that charge small fees for using a debit or credit card when customers do not spend a certain dollar amount. For example, one store said they would charge me $0.75 if I used my Visa debit card to buy a soda, because I did not spend enough. I told the store clerk that she cannot impose a minimum purchase requirement when I used my Visa card and she simply laughed at me. Or was I wrong? - Keiko C. / You are correct. Merchants accepting Visa or MasterCard credit or debit cards are not allowed to set a minimum amount for using the card; that is a violation of the merchant agreement. - Source 01/26/08 - A Cure for Wall Warts You can flip off your widescreen TV with the remote control. Power down your computer to standby. Unplug your cellphone from its charger. But as you leave the room, the "wall warts" -- those small boxes plugged into the wall sockets that power your electronics -- stare with glowing diode eyes in accusation: You are still using power. In homes and offices everywhere, the power drained by idle electronics adds up to what Andy Williams says is a substantial waste. Williams is vice president of a company called On Semiconductor. Using more efficient components and design, his company and others make devices that sharply cut the energy appetite of the "wall warts," both on standby and in use. He sees this as a key path to the future that will cut energy use and help curb global warming by ingenious use of technology. "We're talking about the exact same principle as replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones," he said from Phoenix. "If our products were built into all consumer electronics -- computers, flat-screen TVs, cellphones -- we could save 800 million pounds of carbon emissions." - Source 01/26/08 - Rain is latest source of power Jean-Jacques Chaillot and his colleagues at France's Atomic Energy Commission in Grenoble are working on ways to harness the energy of rainfall using materials that generate electricity when subjected to a mechanical force. Domestically, these materials provide the spark in piezoelectric gas lighters. Mr Chaillot and his group dripped water droplets on to a piezoelectric plastic and obtained tiny but useable amounts of electricity. Although the output is puny compared with that of solar panels, they point out that rain power works in the dark and could supplement solar-powered devices. The researchers think their invention could be used for self-powered environmental sensors. One application could be to detect limescale build-up inside the cooling towers of nuclear power stations. The sensors would be powered by electricity generated when the steam, vented up the chimney, condensed. Another could be a rain detector for a car's windscreen wipers. - Source 01/26/08 - High Tech Mapping Starts to Redefine International Borders A virtually unknown bunch of scientists are working to make the United States grow by 386,000 square miles, and the oil, gas, and other resources contained in that area could be worth about $1.3 trillion. For centuries, nations marked what they owned at sea by measuring out from their shoreline. But in 1994, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea took effect. It stated that countries can move their boundary lines to the edge of their continental shelf - this can give them more territory but is difficult to determine. Today, as sea ice thaws and undersea mapping technology improves, countries are rushing to assert their ownership over potentially lucrative chunks of extra turf. To assert sovereignty over its submerged continental shelf, a nation has to map multiple off-shore points. Among them: the area where the ocean depth drops to 2,500 meters, and the place where a country's land mass drops off to become seafloor, a spot called the foot of the continental slope. If these points are farther out than current boundaries, there may be a case for extending the oceanic property line. - Source 01/26/08 - Solar Engine Whips Waste Heat Into Power A new engine with no moving parts has been shown to convert waste heat and concentrated solar energy into electricity better than conventional solar panels. The invention could lead to electricity generators ranging in size from the very large, such as those used by utility companies, to the very small -- such as those that tap body heat to generate power for personal electronics. Because the conversion rate is so high, the technology could make solar energy cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels. Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson, founder of Johnson Research and Development and Johnson Electro-mechanical Systems, both in Atlanta. Johnson is funding his research with money he made by inventing the super soaker squirt gun. His new, somewhat less cavalier, invention is called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Conversion System. The original goal, in part, was to address a common problem with energy: When it's generated -- by gas, coal, battery, or other means -- much is wasted into thin air. In fact, in the United States alone, the amount of energy lost is more than the energy consumed by the entire country of Japan. Johnson's engine captures that heat and turns it into useful power. It's called an engine because it's based on thermodynamic principals that exist in mechanical engines, such as those that power automobiles. In a car engine, moving pistons and rods compress gas at low temperatures and expand it at high temperatures to convert heat energy to mechanical energy to drive the vehicle. - Source 01/26/08 - Lead Acid Batteries on Steroids for Hybrid Cars Researchers in Australia have created what could be called a lead-acid battery on steroids, capable of performing as well as the nickel-metal hydride systems found in most hybrid cars but at a fraction of the cost. The so-called UltraBattery combines 150-year-old lead-acid technology with supercapacitors, electronic devices that can quickly absorb and release large bursts of energy over millions of cycles without significant degradation. As a result, the new battery lasts at least four times longer than conventional lead-acid batteries, and its creators say that it can be manufactured at one-quarter the cost of existing hybrid-electric battery packs. In the United Kingdom last week, a Honda Insight hybrid powered by the UltraBattery system surpassed 100,000 miles on a test track. In the late 1990s, for example, David Lamb helped design two hybrid cars that used a 60-volt lead-acid pack and a separate 150-volt supercapacitor pack. The lead-acid system allowed the vehicles to drive in all-electric mode in the city, while the supercapacitors gave the cars the jolt that was needed for acceleration and the ability to quickly absorb energy from braking. Lamb's team decided to eliminate the need for all external electronics and instead build the supercapacitors directly into the battery. Essentially, one of the plates (the negative electrode) in the lead-acid battery was made half of lead and half of carbon, turning the battery into a supercapacitor-lead-acid hybrid. - Source 01/26/08 - Too Much Cola Can Cause Kidney Problems Colas contain high levels of phosphoric acid, which has been linked to kidney stones and other renal problems. Much of this conclusion stems from anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. So last year, a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health took a closer look. In a study published in the journal Epidemiology, the team compared the dietary habits of 465 people with chronic kidney disease and 467 healthy people. After controlling for various factors, the team found that drinking two or more colas a day - whether artificially sweetened or regular - was linked to a twofold risk of chronic kidney disease. But drinking two or more noncola carbonated drinks a day, they found, did not increase the risk. The authors of the study say more research is needed, but their findings support the long-held notion that something about cola - the phosphoric acid, for example, or the ability of cola to pull calcium from bones - seems to increase the risk of kidney stones, renal failure and other conditions affecting the kidneys. The bottom line is that there is good evidence that cola beverages can increase the risk of kidney problems, more so than noncola sodas. - Source 01/26/08 - Toyota cars to monitor driver's eyes for safety Toyota will start building a safety system into some of its cars this year that monitors if a driver is clearly watching the road during situations when a crash may occur. The system is based around a camera that watches the driver's upper and lower eye lids to evaluate how attentive he or she is to the road ahead. It builds on a current system that measures the driver's head direction when driving. The car's safety system continuously monitors the road ahead using a radar system, and if it determines a crash may be possible, it matches this with the driver evaluation gathered from the camera. If the driver doesn't appear to be paying attention it sounds a buzzer and warning light. If things progress and a crash becomes probable then it also tries to gain attention of the driver by quickly applying and releasing the brakes. At this point the car's pre-crash brake assist system is also readied. When a crash is judged to be unavoidable the safety system engages the brakes and seatbelts for the collision. - Source 01/26/08 - Alfven waves increase Sun temp 100s of times Powerful magnetic waves have been confirmed for the first time as major players in the process that makes the sun's atmosphere strangely hundreds of times hotter than its already superhot surface. The magnetic waves - called Alfven waves - can carry enough energy from the sun's active surface to heat its atmosphere, or corona. Scientists have speculated that Alfven waves act as energy conveyor belts to heat the sun's atmosphere, but lacked the observational evidence to prove their theories. De Pontieu and his colleagues changed that by using the Japanese orbiting solar observatory Hinode to peer at the region sandwiched between the sun's surface and corona, called the chromosphere. Not only did they spot many Alfven waves, but they also estimated the waves carried more than enough energy to sustain the corona's temperatures as well as to power the solar wind (charged particles that constantly stream out from the sun) to speeds of nearly 1 million mph. - Source 01/26/08 - Power plant waste used to make cookies An Austin company called Skyonic, is racing to make history and maybe change it. They're one of many company's searching for the best way to strip carbon dioxide from power plants exhaust. Skyonic taps a little exhaust off the plant and basically mixes it with salt and water. When the exhaust goes back, they say, the carbon dioxide is gone. "It looks like a very cookbook chemistry," said Jones. The process creates some interesting by-products: hydrogen, which is a clean fuel; chlorine, an industrial chemical; and baking soda, where all the carbon dioxide is locked up. What may impress the energy industry even more is that the process actually makes money. Skyonic says selling the hydrogen and chlorine will raise more money than it costs to build the whole system. As for the baking soda - it turns out the world already has plenty of it. So, Skyonic's plan calls for burying the baking soda and carbon dioxide back in the hole where the coal came from. - Source 01/26/08 - World's Most Powerful Rail Gun Delivered to Navy Instead of relying on chemical propellants -- such as gunpowder -- a rail gun uses magnetic "rails" to launch a solid, nonexplosive projectile at incredible speed. Theoretically, rail guns would be able to precisely strike targets at extreme ranges, and would negate the risks associated with carrying around tons of explosive ammo. More to the point, they're cool-sounding, just like lasers. The Navy’s electrically propelled DDG 100 Destroyer, Chaboki says, is a prime candidate for the final 64-megajoule system. Around 72 megawatts (MW) of the vessel's power can be used for propulsion. But during combat, the destroyer's speed could be brought down, freeing up energy for a rail gun. Chaboki calculates that firing the 64-megajoule weapon six times per minute would require 16 MW of power, which would be supplied by either onboard capacitors or pulsed alternators. The more daunting challenge is the force of the rail gun itself: A few shots can dislodge the conducting rails -- or even damage the barrel of the gun. While the 32-MJ LRG should start firing soon, it could take another 13 years for a 64-megajoule system to be built and deployed on a ship. The Marines, in particular, are interested in the potential for rail guns to deliver supporting fire from up to 220 miles away -- around 10 times further than standard ship-mounted cannons -- with rounds landing more quickly and with less advance warning than a volley of Tomahawk cruise missiles. - Source 01/26/08 - Lonely people more likely to believe in God Humans have evolved as social creatures, so loneliness cuts to the quick. Living in groups was critical to the survival and safety of our ancient ancestors, and "complete isolation or ostracism has been tantamount to a death sentence," said University of Chicago researcher Nicholas Epley, who led the study. While group living isn't critical to survival in the modern world, feeling socially connected is. Feeling isolated and lonely is a very painful emotional state for people, Epley said, and can lead to ill health, both physically and mentally. "We found that inducing people to feel lonely made them more religious essentially," Epley told LiveScience, though he notes it won't cause any sudden conversions. Owning pets and religious beliefs and practices are both known to increase a person's sense of well-being, but why exactly that is isn’t well known, Epley said. Epley and his colleagues plan to probe the issue further to see if anthropomorphizing pets or believing in anthropomorphized supernatural agents is what is responsible for alleviating feelings of loneliness. If it is, it could provide alternate means for people to feel socially connected when connecting to humans isn't an option. - Source 01/26/08 - Obesity operation may cure diabetes in many Patients who had surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs were five times more likely to see their diabetes disappear over the next two years than were patients who had standard diabetes care, according to Australian researchers. Most of the surgery patients were able to stop taking diabetes drugs and achieve normal blood tests. The patients had stomach band surgery, a procedure more common in Australia than in the United States, where gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling, predominates. Gastric bypass is even more effective against diabetes, achieving remission in a matter of days or a month, said Dr. David Cummings, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal but was not involved in the study. In the Australian study, all the patients were obese and had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during the past two years. Their average age was 47. Half the patients underwent a type of surgery called laparoscopic gastric banding, where an adjustable silicone cuff is installed around the upper stomach, limiting how much a person can eat. Both groups lost weight over two years; the surgery patients lost 46 pounds on average, while the standard-care patients lost an average of 3 pounds. Blood tests showed diabetes remission in 22 of the 29 surgery patients after two years. In the standard-care group, only four of the 26 patients achieved that goal. The patients who lost the most weight were the most likely to eliminate their diabetes. Both patient groups learned about low-fat, high-fiber diets and were encouraged to exercise. Both groups could meet with a health professional every six weeks for two years. The death rate for stomach band surgery, which can cost $17,000 to $20,000, is about 1 in 1,000. There were only minor complications in the study. Stomach stapling has a 2 percent death rate and costs $20,000 to $30,000. - Source 01/26/08 - Double amputee walks again due to Bluetooth Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill lost both his legs above the knees when a bomb exploded under his Humvee while on patrol in Iraq on October 15, 2006. He has 32 pins in his hip and a 6-inch screw holding his pelvis together. Bleill, 30, is one of two Iraq war veterans, both double leg amputees, to use the Bluetooth prosthetics. Computer chips in each leg send signals to motors in the artificial joints so the knees and ankles move in a coordinated fashion. Bleill's set of prosthetics have Bluetooth receivers strapped to the ankle area. The Bluetooth device on each leg tells the other leg what it's doing, how it's moving, whether walking, standing or climbing steps, for example. "They mimic each other, so for stride length, for amount of force coming up, going uphill, downhill and such, they can vary speed and then to stop them again," Bleill told CNN from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he's undergoing rehab. - Source 01/26/08 - Smartphones, seat belts, searches, and the Fourth Amendment When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone as a "revolutionary" device, he probably wasn't thinking of its effect on the Fourth Amendment. But a new paper by Adam Gershowitz, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, argues that unless courts or legislators make significant changes to the rules governing law enforcement searches, the increasing ubiquity of devices like Apple's übergadget will permit police to routinely gather massive amounts of citizens' sensitive personal data without a warrant. / The Fourth Amendment guarantees that Americans will not be subject to "unreasonable searches and seizures." Normally, this means police must show a judge that there is "probable cause" to believe a search will uncover evidence of a crime before tapping our phones or digging through our papers. With the proliferation of iPhone-like devices, the officer digging through your coat pocket suddenly has access to gigabytes worth of potentially sensitive e-mail, videos, photographs, browsing histories, and other documents. If you're in the habit of keeping your passwords saved, they may even be able to reach bank statements, file servers, and that Nerve Personals account you opened "just for fun." Though the underlying rationale for searches incident to arrest is officer safety, courts have adopted a "bright line" rule permitting an arresting officer to search any object in a suspect's possession, such as a cigarette pack, even if it unlikely to conceal a miniature Glock. And since the Supreme Court has ruled that police have broad authority to arrest people for even trivial infractions, such as failure to wear a seat belt, the current rule gives law enforcement officers broad discretion to transform a routine traffic stop into a highly intrusive excavation of your digital life. - Source 01/24/08 - Video - Generator powered by sugar and yeast The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight. Basically we have two chambers on either end of the rotating (pivoted) rod. The arrangement of the chambers is such that on either side of the rod, one chamber sits on top of the other (this is important). At the beginning of this operation, I fill the bottom chamber on each side with a yeast sugar solution. Each bottom chamber is always locked under pressure by special valves. Due to pressure the solution starts moving from a bottom chamber into its respective top chamber. Note that by moving upwards, the fluid’s center of gravity shifts, resulting in a mass imbalance which causes the wobbling. - Source 01/24/08 - Seattle police receive spanking for taking photographer's camera Apparently the City of Seattle settled with amateur photographer Bogdan Mohora after the ACLU helped him file a claim over a false arrest when Seattle cops James Pitts and David Toner arrested Mohara for taking their photograph during the arrest. Bogdan was awarded $8,000 and the officers were disciplined. Just another friendly reminder that photography is not a crime, even if the police tell you it is. - Source 01/24/08 - A study in Coupon Magic Take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks - don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not. At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing. Why does this work? Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again. - Source 01/24/08 - The Drink Bandit The Drink Bandit is a color-coded bracelet that pulls apart to create two bands -- one goes on the wrist, and the other matching colored band goes on the drink. Once in place, The Drink Bandit helps the children easily identify their own drink container. Children will no longer abandon drinks, creating waste, or drink from someone else's container, which spreads germs. The Drink Bandit comes in a package of 10 stretchable bracelets -- 20 once pulled apart -- in 10 bright colors, and is available at www.TheDrinkBandit.com. The bracelets are disposable, but they are easily washed with soap and water and can be reused. McManigal aims to sell the product at large retailers, grocery stores and party supply stores. She is also developing a larger Drink Bandit version to market to the adult segment. "It's a common scenario," McManigal said. "You go to a party and everyone has the same drink. A lot of people accidentally grab the wrong can, cup, or bottle. You won't die from it, but you'd rather not sip off someone else's drink." - Source 01/24/08 - New Sleep Mask, Blindfold and Eye Cover Designed to Block All Light This new room darkening mask has a unique design that completely blocks out all light in a room at night and also the bright light of the sun during daytime. This unique Weber No Light mask is made of a laminate of two different thicknesses of black foam material that make sleeping in complete darkness possible. On the outside of the mask is a thin (1/8 thick") but strong molded foam material. On the inside is another layer of sponge-like 1/2" thick foam where there are two large (1-3/4") circular cutouts placed directly in front of the wearer's eyes. These cutouts provide an opening so the wearer's eyes can blink, open or close without ever touching the foam. There is a 1/4" wide elastic strap to hold the mask on the wearer's head. The wearer can easily adjust the tension of the strap by making it longer or shorter for the most comfortable fit. Another unique feature of the mask is a washable cloth liner fastened on the inside of the mask (with Velcro). The easy to remove washable liner is placed in a position between the foam of the mask and skin of the wearer's face. When necessary, this liner is removed, washed and then air-dried. The twofold purpose of the liner is to keep the mask clean, fresh and sanitary at all times as well as to dramatically extend the useful life of the mask. This highly efficient no light mask has many practical uses. For example, use it as: a blindfold for games at parties, in sleep clinics, for travel, quick short naps, during time in the hospital, during yoga classes, for sensory testing of students, and since there is no metal in the mask, it can also be used during MRI and radiology examinations. The Weber No Light Sleep Mask is priced at $10.95 each (plus $2.00 s/h) For more information, or to order, write to: Originals By Weber, Attention: Terry Weber, 338-C Alabama Avenue, Toms River, New Jersey 08753, or go to the website for complete details: http://www.yrret.stirsite.com/page/page/3888721.htm . - Source 01/24/08 - Raser Technologies 155 MW Geothermal Financing Program Raser Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: RZ) announced that it has entered into an agreement with Merrill Lynch for the structuring and financing of up to 155 megawatts (MW) of Raser’s geothermal power plants, including a commitment letter from Merrill Lynch to provide funding for the construction of Raser’s first geothermal power plant. The plant, using PureCycle® geothermal technology from UTC Power, a United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) company, is designed to produce 10.5 MW of electrical power with zero emissions. The organic Rankine cycle-based power system is an advanced binary cycle system that is driven by a simple evaporation process and is entirely enclosed, which means it produces no emissions. The only byproduct is electricity, and the system’s “fuel” -- geothermal hot water -- is a renewable resource. - Source 01/24/08 - UltraBattery Sets New Standard for HEVs The odometer of a low emission hybrid electric test vehicle reached 100,000 miles as the car circled a track in the UK using the power of an advanced CSIRO battery system. The UltraBattery combines a supercapacitor and a lead acid battery in a single unit, creating a hybrid car battery that lasts longer, costs less and is more powerful than current technologies used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). “Previous tests show the UltraBattery has a life cycle that is at least four times longer and produces 50 per cent more power than conventional battery systems. It’s also about 70 per cent cheaper than the batteries currently used in HEVs,” said David Lamb, Low Emissions Transport Leader, Energy Transformed Flagship, CISRO, Australia. - Source 01/24/08 - How UFOs and Bigfoot Could Save Earth Many New Agers and believers in the mysterious and paranormal have long incorporated environmentalism into their beliefs. Among people who claim to have been abducted or contacted by space aliens, messages about world peace and warnings of impending environmental disaster are common. One popular belief is that UFO sightings are simply glimpses of the benevolent aliens watching over us, monitoring our destructive ways. We should work to save the planet, the thinking goes, but if we can't, our savior space brothers will intervene just before the world destroys itself, either through environmental pollution or global nuclear war. Once that happens, we Earthlings will see the error of our ways, ushering in a new era of peace, love, and global consciousness. This bleak notion that humans inherently (and inevitably) destroy everything is common in New Age circles. However, though humans can destroy, we can also build and protect. The revival of animals from the brink of extinction (such as bald eagles in North America and elephants in Africa) are but two of many examples. Mankind may or may not be marching blithely on the path to ecological self-destruction, but if Bigfoot or aliens help encourage people to reduce, reuse, and recycle, so much the better. That's why they call them "little green men." - Source 01/24/08 - A Possible Answer to Flyby Anomalies Strange things are happening to our robotic space explorers. Also known as the "Pioneer effect" (the unexpected and sudden alterations to Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 trajectories measured as they continue their journey into the outer solar system), similar anomalies are being seen in flybys by modern space probes. Earth flybys by Galileo, Rosetta, NEAR and Cassini have all experienced a sudden boost in speed. After cancelling out all possible explanations, including leakage of fuel and velocity measurement error, a new study suggests the answer may lie in a bizarre characteristic of universal physics. A recent study by Magic McCulloch suggests that "Unruh radiation" may be the culprit. The Unruh effect, put simply, suggests that accelerating bodies experience a type of electromagnetic radiation. At very low acceleration, the wavelength emitted will be so large that a whole wavelength will be longer than the dimensions of the Universe (otherwise known as the Hubble Distance). Low acceleration would therefore generate waves that have no effect on the body. However, should the accelerating body (i.e. Galileo getting accelerated by Earth's gravity during the 1990 flyby) slowly exceed an acceleration threshold, the Unruh radiation will decrease in wavelength (smaller than the Hubble Distance), causing a tiny, but measurable "boost" to its increasing velocity. - Source 01/24/08 - Arcologists Dream: 7 Proposed Futuristic Sky Cities As the world’s population continues to boom so does density in major conurbations. This increase in density is actually increasing around the world as an influx of people move to the cities in search of jobs and the (often hollow) promise of a better life. This leaves the world’s major cities with a conundrum: how do you accommodate more people in the same space? For many the answer lies in the architectural philosophies of Paolo Soleri, an Italian-American visionary accredited as the father of arcology. If you have ever played Sim City 2000 you may or may not already be acquainted with the arcology, a structure of mammoth proportions created to accommodate large populations in sync with the surrounding environment. - Source 01/24/08 - Slower boats to China as ship owners save fuel The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela on Tuesday, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill. "We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment," Wrage told Reuters. "Showing that ecology and economics are not contradictions motivates us all." The 10,000-tonne 'MS Beluga SkySails' -- which will use a computer-guided kite to harness powerful ocean winds far above the surface and support the engine -- combines modern technology with know-how that has been in use for millennia. The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That's about 5 percent of the world's total. Also, their fuel costs rose by as much as 70 percent last year. That dramatic increase has ship owners clambering onto a bandwagon to reduce speed as a way to save fuel and cut the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Hermann Klein, an executive at Germanischer Lloyd classification society. "Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down," he added. - Source 01/24/08 - Israel Eyes Thinking Machines to Fight 'Doomsday' Missile Strikes Israeli military leaders have begun early planning for a new, robotic defense system, armed with enough artificial intelligence that it "could take over completely" from flesh-and-blood operators. "It will be designed for... autonomous operations,' Brig. Gen. Daniel Milo, commander of Israel's air defense forces, tells Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome. And in the event of a "doomsday" strike, Opall-Rome notes, the system could handle "attacks that exceed physiological limits of human command." Israel already uses a blend of Arrow and Patriot interceptors to handle incoming rockets and missiles. This new command-and-control program would be "superimposed over all those defenses" -- and over new ones to come. In the future, and “under very complex scenarios,” Milo said, the envisioned super system would be able to generate a level of supreme situational awareness and snap intuitive capabilities that could surpass the very best wartime commanders. “We’re talking about something that sees everything and calculates everything and makes decisions that can only be made through a real revolution in BMC4ISR [Battle Management/Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance],” he said. “We’re not there yet, and it could take a decade. But this is our vision and we’re running in that direction.” - Source 01/24/08 - Jesus Hates Public Prayer I wonder why so many Christians ignore the advice of Jesus? "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." - Matthew 6:5-6 - Source 01/22/08 - The Brickley Engine The Brickley engine configuration is projected to improve fuel mileage 15-20%. CO2 emissions are cut as well by 15-20%. This accomplishment is made through reducing engine friction: turning energy normally lost in heat into useful work. With petroleum prices increasing and global warming on the rise, there is an urgent need for us to provide a more efficient, less polluting internal combustion engine. By changing how the pistons connect to each other and how they connect to the crankshaft, a great deal of friction can be eliminated. The configuration employs a combination of pinned linkages to determine the paths of the pistons to within a few thousandths of an inch of linearity, and thus basically eliminates the need for piston skirts. It connects the pistons efficiently to each other and to the crankshaft at a fraction of the losses incurred in a typical configuration. The top end of the engine remains basically the same and uses the technology available in current engines. - Source 01/22/08 - Flash Face Revisited An oldie, but still a goodie: Ultimate Flash Face. A very easy to use interface lets you create police-sketch type faces. It's amazing how making one small change can have such a huge impact on the face. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 01/22/08 - V-Shaped Bed Cradles Body for More Restful Sleep - Jan 1932 A V-SHAPED bed recently invented supports the body perfectly at every point and thus promotes better rest. When unused the bed is straight like every other bed. However, one pull on a chain at the side of the bed immediately changes it to a V-shape. Another advantage claimed for the bed is that the covers are held substantially away from the person, thereby allowing the free circulation of air to the body. (This might be an interesting thing to try as opposed to sleeping on a flat bed. - JWD) - Source 01/22/08 - Is this the end of cheap food? The Guardian reports that food prices are rising, which is coming as a surprise to "UK shoppers aged under 50 [who] have so far never experienced food-price inflation. The article cites four reasons for the price increase: 1. Oil prices: "$100 a barrel means food that is four-times as expensive to plant, irrigate, harvest and transport as it was six years ago. Some commodities brokers are now betting on oil going to $200 a barrel within a decade." 2. Climate: "drought, hurricanes and floods around the world last year made for terrible harvests - from Australia to the Caribbean and the United Kingdom." 3. Market speculation and use of crops for fuel: "Since George Bush announced a rush to corn-based ethanol it's done well for American corn farmers - 20 per cent of whose harvest, subsidised by the government, went into fuel tanks rather than flour mills this year." 4. Economic boom in China and India: "Around the world, and through history, people have eaten more meat as they have become richer. This is called the nutrition transition and it's now happening, very quickly, in the two most populous nations on the planet." Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, spoke recently of a 'very serious crisis' brought about by the rise in food prices and the rise in the oil price. Various global economic bodies are forecasting rises of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade. - Source 01/22/08 - Inventor hopes solar hat is a hot seller In November Tommie Nellon received a patent for a ‘‘combined solar-powered fan and hat for maximizing airflow through the hat.’’ Nellon said he expects to start making the hats soon and to sell them for $29.95 each. He said potential customers could range from farmworkers to amusement park visitors. Nellon has made dozens of the hats already, and his workers use them on the job with his company Unlimited Energy Inc. in Fresno. As for the hat? It’s broad-brimmed and made of light straw. Nellon said he found the right type by visiting rural stores where, a few years ago, they sold for $3. Now they’re $9. In the front, a small - and very light - plastic fan is mounted,nd to power fans, lights, radios and laptops. Patent materials note that Nellon’s hat is different. Unlike many others, which direct the air to the wearer’s face, his design blows air across the top of the head. Patent documents say it ‘‘reduces the incidence of heat exhaustion (and) heatstroke.’’ - Source 01/22/08 - CuePrompter.com -- Online teleprompter/autocue service CuePrompter takes any chunk of text (up to 2000 characters at a time) and displays it TelePrompTer-style in an auto-scrolling, high-contrast window. You can adjust the TelePrompTer speed, text size, and display mode (normal or mirrored, if you are actually going to set it up with a reflective glass for full-on TelePrompTer duties...CuePrompter claims to be Windows and IE only, but I had no problem using it on a Mac in Firefox (display mirroring was the only feature that was IE-only). Also works in Firefox/Windows; requires Javascript. - Source 01/22/08 - Projector creates 80-inch image from three inches away Sanyo's PLC-XL50 is the "world's shortest throw distance projector", offering horizontal or vertical placement and a projection distance of just 3-inches (80-inch projection). This 3LCD projector features "true XGA" resolution and is rated at 2000-lumens. Practical uses include: billboards, shopping malls, amusement parks, and floors/walls. Video after the break. - Source 01/22/08 - 10 Incredible Old Computer Ads ..."80 MB for under $12,000" (1977) / ..."What the Heck is Electronic Mail?" (1981) / "The New 16K RAM card..." (circa 1977) / Click these and the other seven print advertisements to view at larger size. - Source 01/22/08 - The World’s Coolest Solar Collecting Building? Sanyo in Japan has constructed an amazing solar-collecting building that embodies both clean-energy ideals and awesome architectural design strategies. The so-called Solar Ark has over 5,000 active solar panels generating over 500,000 KWh of environmentally friendly energy. Nearly 500 multi-colored lighting units placed between the various solar panels can be activated to create a variety of shapes and letters on the sides of this enormous structure. As a working example of the potential of solar energy, the structure contains a solar museum with interactive exhibits as well as a solar lab and various meeting rooms for global environmental programs. The curved form is designed to take maximum benefit from as well as to graphically reflect the path of the sun and its energy. An elaborate truss system allows dizzying cantelevers to span out from the center of the structure and rise toward the sky. - Source 01/22/08 - How China Loses the Coming Space War A year ago to the day, China knocked a weather satellite out of orbit, and threw the international community into panic. Some figured the satellite-killer test was the harbinger of a future war in space -- the kind of conflict that could cripple a tech-dependent United States military. For years, the American armed forces have worried about an attack on US satellites... The United States military has become increasingly dependent on space. It uses photo-reconnaissance satellites to observe potential adversaries, GPS satellites to guide munitions with pin-point accuracy, communications satellites to handle the flow of information into and out of a theater of operations, and early warning satellites to detect and track enemy missile launches to name just a few of the better known applications. Because of this increasing dependence, many analysts have worried that the US is most vulnerable to asymmetric attacks against its space assets; in their view US satellites are “sitting ducks” without any sort of defense and their destruction would cripple the US military. China’s test of a sophisticated anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon a year ago, Friday -- 11 January 2007, when it shot down its own obsolete weather satellite -- has only increased these concerns. - Source 01/22/08 - Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy The results of the research project by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Energy Department, released Wednesday, suggest that if households have digital tools to set temperature and price preferences, the peak loads on utility grids could be trimmed by up to 15 percent a year. Over a 20-year period, this could save $70 billion on spending for power plants and infrastructure, and avoid the need to build the equivalent of 30 large coal-fired plants, say scientists at the federal laboratory. The demonstration project was as much a test of consumer behavior as it was of new technology. Scientists wanted to find out if the ability to monitor consumption constantly would cause people to save energy - just as studies have shown that people walk more if they wear pedometers to count their steps. In the Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle, 112 homes were equipped with digital thermostats, and computer controllers were attached to water heaters and clothes dryers. These controls were connected to the Internet. The homeowners could go to a Web site to set their ideal home temperature and how many degrees they were willing to have that temperature move above or below the target. They also indicated their level of tolerance for fluctuating electricity prices. In effect, the homeowners were asked to decide the trade-off they wanted to make between cost savings and comfort. The households, it turned out, soon became active participants in managing the load on the utility grid and their own bills. - Source 01/22/08 - Unplug and go It looks something like a regular car, but the Zenn micro automobile is powered from a household electric outlet rather than a tank of gasoline. As early as next Tuesday, an ordinance could be introduced in Milwaukee that would allow the use of Zenns and other neighborhood electric vehicles on city streets. Only about 35 Wisconsin municipalities have such ordinances. Even in Janesville, where Wisconsin's first Zenn dealership is located, the little cars can't be legally operated on city streets. "Right now, we can't drive our cars off of the dealership lot," said Tim Thompson, owner of Green Autos, in Janesville. The $12,700 Zenn can go about 35 miles on a single charge of its lead-acid batteries. Smaller than a BMW Mini Cooper, it has a top speed of just 25 mph and can carry two passengers and a load of groceries in 13 cubic feet of storage space. The Zenn - short for zero emissions, no noise - plugs into a standard household electric outlet and can be 80% recharged in four hours or fully charged in about eight hours. Based on current electricity prices, the annual driving cost would be about $200 a year, according to a Journal Sentinel estimate based on energy sources. There's no tailpipe, and there aren't any emissions of carbon dioxide. - Source 01/22/08 - Sun Cycle 24 Predicted to be 50 Percent Larger than C-23 There has been ongoing debate whether Cycle 24 began on July 1st 2006, or began January 4th 2008. What determines a new solar cycle is when the first sunspot distributes a 'reverse' magnetic field. Over the last several months, the sunspot and solar activity have been extremely mild. This is known as 'solar minimum'. From this point on, solar activity will begin to ramp up with more significant activity becoming noticeable by the end of this year. Cycle 23 introduced us to the largest solar flare "ever recorded". On November 4th 2003 a solar flare coming from just around the western limb of the Sun exploded. It was measured as an X-40. Until this moment, nothing had measured past an X-9. (at least since instruments were developed to measure). In addition to this, Cycle 23 showed us dozens of X-class flares, and even more numbers of M-class. Also note Cycle 24's 'apex' (maximum) occurs between 2011 and 2012. I suggest our Mayan elders knew of this all along and is in association with Mayan prophecy and calendar. Solar Storm Warning: You Have One Year or Less to Prepare. The federal government now predicts a new cycle of solar storms will begin to intensify by spring 2008. By this time we will start to see larger and possibility of dangerous consequences. The new set of storms are expected to peak around the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. That's the conclusion of some scientists at NASA and NOAA. On November 4th 2003 a solar flare and following CME (coronal mass ejection) exploded just as it began rotating over the western limb of the Sun. If it had been just 48 to 72 hours earlier, the flare would have been Earth directed and we would have experienced a direct hit. The strength of this event measured an X-40, of which such strength had never been witnessed or anticipated. Even to this day we can only speculate the damage it would have caused to our power grids, satellites, GPS, and any number of devices which depend on communication or directional satellites. - Source 01/22/08 - Prostate cancer treatment draws fire U.S. medical tourists are headed to Latin American health clinics to receive a controversial prostate cancer treatment not approved in the United States. High-intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU therapy, uses isolated bursts of near-boiling temperatures to attack cancerous tissues in the prostate through a rectal probe. U.S. HIFU, a company touting the treatment at international clinics, said the treatment provides an alternative to more conventional treatment without the sexual or urinary side-effects of other treatments. The director of the U.S. HIFU, Dr. George M. Suarez, told the Times the treatment's $25,000 price tag is justified and claimed the treatment is an alternative to surgery or radiation with fewer side effects. - Source 01/22/08 - Algae has potential as a source of oil Common algae from ponds and waste-water treatment plants may produce vast amounts of burnable oil, say researchers at the University of Minnesota. Algae produces 5,000 gallons of oil per acre. Corn, by comparison, produces 18 gallons. Soybean yields 48 gallons. An acre of palm trees yields 635 gallons. Researchers Roger Ruan and Paul Chen will start with 200 gallons of waste water, but see the potential as enormous, the Star Tribune reported. They also predict the steep price of production, $20 per gallon, will drop significantly as the technology improves and catches on. The production process can take advantage of excess heat, nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus produced by coal-burning plants and waste-water incinerators, making algae pond farms a possibility for northern and southern states. - Source 01/22/08 - Let the End Times Roll With global warming hogging the limelight, and Nostradamus predicting our impending demise, This excerpt from Radar Magazine's February issue explores the other apocalyptic scenarios threatening to do us in. From transgenic experiments destined to go awry to the imminent culmination of the Mayan calendar's 13th baktun cycle, we'll have to dodge a hell of a lot of bullets to make it to the next century. In a cold panic, Radar sifted through mountains of data, interviewed the world's top experts, and prayed to several long-forgotten deities in an attempt to assemble a list of the planet's most pressing doomsday scenarios and, more important, your best bets for staying alive. - Source 01/20/08 - Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle The Aquaduct is a pedal powered vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water for the developing world. A peristaltic pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large tank, through a filter, to a smaller clean tank. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while travelling or while stationary. An average family uses 20 gallons of water a day. - Source 01/20/08 - Save a buck a gallon with next-generation ethanol A west suburban company plans to turn municipal garbage into next-generation ethanol for a production cost of under $1 per gallon. That translates into a pump cost of 50 cents to $1 under current gasoline prices, according to company estimates. But the best part is that the seemingly limitless supply of municipal garbage promises an energy source that could potentially eliminate America's dependence on foreign oil. “It’s here. It’s not about five years. It’s about now. We’re not waiting. It’s sitting in front of us today,” said Wes Bolsen, vice president of business development at Warrenville-based Coskata Inc. The process turns wood chips, garden waste - even old tires - into ethanol in two minutes flat. There are no byproducts except water, which is recycled. One ton of dry input yields 100 gallons of ethanol, which is much more efficient that any other means of producing ethanol. The company will include agricultural byproducts such as corn stalks as part of the raw material. In addition, the Coskata process produces 84 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline production, and uses 89 percent less fossil fuel, according to May Wu, an environmental scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. The process involves a unique hybrid of technologies that have been around for years. At the front end is a gasification process that heats materials to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, turning them into carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, collectively known as “syngas.” This gas is then fed to a hungry breed of engineered organisms that eat carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol as a byproduct. Bolsen likened the unique appetite of the organisms to kids who eat French fries and broccoli at the same time. The resulting mixture of ethanol and water is separated in the next step and then the water is recycled. Altogether, less than one gallon of water is used to produce each gallon of ethanol, compared with 3-4 gallons of water used in corn ethanol production and 44 gallons consumed in gasoline production. The process requires about 50 percent of the overall energy used in traditional methods of ethanol production. “There’s no invention here. This is innovation,” Bolsen said. “We’ve taken the best pieces from multiple different areas.” In the best-case scenario, the process yields nearly eight units of energy for every unit of non-renewable energy put into the system, according to studies done at Argonne National Laboratory. Using a “well-to-wheels” analysis, researchers at Argonne took into account all aspects of fuel production, including fossil fuel input, crop production, electricity and natural gas. By comparison, gasoline production only yields about 0.84 units of energy for every unit of non-renewable energy input. In other words, it takes more energy to make it than you get from it. Wood chips, agricultural waste, even old tires can be converted into ethanol using the Coskata process. - Source 01/20/08 - Cheap Tsunami Detector Hashem al-Ghaili, a university student in Sana’a, and his brother, Mohammed, recently developed a device with the potential to save millions of lives. Its design is simple, but its ramifications are anything but. Utilizing a radio transmitter and a pressure gauge, al-Ghaili hopes his device could provide a low-cost solution for warning the world of imminent tsunamis. “I started to think of a system that could warn people of a tsunami before it struck,” he explained, and he began brainstorming with his brother. “Most tsunami alert systems now are very complex and require a lot of money and resources, including satellites. Ours is cheap and simple.” “Satellites can detect tsunamis by detecting anomalies in pictures of the ocean, but a tsunami is nothing more than a blast of energy,” he explained. His device, a pressure sensor, can be placed in any ocean. When it detects a large disturbance in the energy patterns of the water that surrounds it, radio signals are broadcast to receivers on the shore. Tsunamis are a result of earthquakes at the bottom of the ocean. When the tectonic plates that comprise the earth’s crust shift due to pressure, enormous waves are propelled across the ocean at speeds up to five hundred miles per hour. “When the waves exert pressure on our device, it sends out magnetic waves similar to those that bring music to your radio. The receiver translates the message from the device in the ocean, and emits a sound and projects a color according to the current danger level. When a tsunami is coming, you will quickly determine its magnitude by the message our device sends out.” Al-Ghaili tested the tool in a spring in his village. By placing the device into different water pressures, he was able to calibrate it into something useful. After developing a working model, he and his brother petitioned the Ministry of Higher Education to financially back the development and implementation of their invention. - Source 01/20/08 - Good Career or Sweet Home? Sociologists worry about growing amount of career-looped people, who imagine nothing but career rise in their life. Scientists have announced results of their recent research, in which over three thousand people from various Russian cities took part. Each respondent answered what was more important to him - his work or private life. Poll results were not surprising, though quite sad, since majority of respondents would have gladly changed friends and family for career ascents. About 46% of poll participants are ready to devote 60% of their time to business, and the remaining time (40%) can be spent with family, friends and spared for hobbies. One third of respondents dreams of “the happy medium”, which is distributed the following way: half of life for career and half for themselves and relatives. About 10% appear to be true career climbers, who get lost in work without paying attention to anything else. Their family-oriented antipodes close the research with 5%. - Source 01/20/08 - Audio Modulated Solid State Tesla Coil Lolly from Germany is a creator of one of the Tesla coils that was featured in the Musical Tesla Coil Collection article last week. Lolly has now created a video that walks through the technology he used to build his device. “Overview and demonstration of my SSTC Setup. The RF is generated with a Class-E MOSFET stage with controllable Frequency. The sound is modulated on the gate signal of the MOSFET via PWM. The sound is then emitted by the arc itself. Excitation and PWM Frequencies are set with DDS generators controlled via a Microcontroller board with USB interface.” - Source 01/20/08 - DIY Vacuum Press Vacuum forming is simply heating up sheets of plastic until they are soft and stretchy then placing it over a positive form and using a vacuum to suck the plastic tightly onto the form. I have gotten very good detail with my machine, even pore texture from life casts! I had seen more elaborate machines with tanks, vacuum pumps, check valves etc. I just wanted to test the process and it worked so well that I have been using it ever since. In fact you may have seen pieces made on my machine on The tv show Angel and music videos on MTV. - Source 01/20/08 - Battery Beach Burnout to Promote 'Green' Electric Vehicle Technologies The Florida Electric Auto Association (FLEAA), in conjunction with Vectrix and AC Propulsion, will be hosting the 3rd Annual "Battery Beach Burnout", an alternative fuel / electric vehicle competition, in Miami, FL at Countyline Dragway January 25th and 26th. The free event consists of multiple competitions involving electric vehicles (EV), including a drag race, auto-cross, scooter-cross and a show 'n shine event. The drag race will be Friday evening from 7pm to 1am, and the EV auto-cross, scooter-cross and show 'n shine will be Saturday from 9am to 4pm at Countyline Dragway. Saturday, visitors will be able to ride in several of the cars on display in a ride and drive area. Visitors will also be able to participate and vote for their favorite car in the show 'n shine competition. - Source 01/20/08 - Harnessing Waste Heat for Electricity Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. The far-ranging potential applications of this technology include DOE's hydrogen fuel cell-powered "Freedom CAR," and personal power-jackets that could use heat from the human body to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices. The researchers describe a unique "electroless etching" method by which arrays of silicon nanowires are synthesized in an aqueous solution on the surfaces of wafers that can measure dozens of square inches in area. The technique involves the galvanic displacement of silicon through the reduction of silver ions on a wafer's surface. Unlike other synthesis techniques, which yield smooth-surfaced nanowires, this electroless etching method produces arrays of vertically aligned silicon nanowires that feature exceptionally rough surfaces. The roughness is believed to be critical to the surprisingly high thermoelectric efficiency of the silicon nanowires. - Source 01/20/08 - Controlling Cell Behavior with Magnets For the first time, researchers have demonstrated a means of controlling cell functions with a physical, rather than chemical, signal. Using a magnetic field to pull together tiny beads targeted to particular cell receptors, Harvard researchers made cells take up calcium, and then stop, then take it up again. Their work is the first to prove that such a level of control over cells is possible. If the approach can be used with many cell types and cell functions, it could lead to a totally new class of therapies that rely on cells themselves to make and release drugs. Targeted nanoparticles with iron oxide cores were used to mimic antigens in vitro. Each is attached to a molecule that in turn can attach to a single receptor on an immune cell. When Ingber exposes cells bound with these particles to a weak magnetic field, the nanoparticles become magnetic and draw together, pulling the attached cell receptors into clusters. This causes the cells to take in calcium. (In the body, this would initiate a chain of events that leads the cells to release histamine.) When the magnetic field is turned off, the particles are no longer attracted to each other, the receptors move apart, and the influx of calcium stops. - Source 01/20/08 - Leave ‘Em Gasping A Greeley businessman apologized Wednesday after a joke about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama fell flat during the National Western Stock Show's annual Citizen of the West banquet. William R. Farr was pretending to read telegrams congratulating this year's award recipient, University of Colorado President Hank Brown, when he pulled out a piece of paper and said: "I have a telegram from the White House. They're going to have to change the name of that building if Obama's elected." Witnesses said they could hear people gasp in the ballroom of the Adam's Mark Hotel. "I gasped," said Gov. Bill Ritter, who was sitting at the table with Farr... I think it was uncalled for and atrocious," said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, who was also in attendance. - Source 01/20/08 - Stovetop Pizza Oven The stovetop's not just for stuffing any more: Stovetop Ceramic Pizza Oven. What Hakuho has done is to give you the tools you need to make the perfect pizza - right on top of your gas range. Big or small, pizza ovens work pretty much the same way. Heat from below crisps the underside while steady, reflected heat warms the top without drying out the cheese & toppings. - Source 01/20/08 - Everybody's PIN Number Revealed! All the permutations....If you have an ATM card, you'd better change your PIN. - Source 01/20/08 - Won’t Sign Loyalty Oath The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Texas to print presidential primary ballots without Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich's name. The court refused to step into a dispute between Kucinich and the Texas Democratic Party over a loyalty oath all candidates must sign to make the ballot. Kucinich and singer-supporter Willie Nelson objected to the party oath that a presidential candidate must "fully support" the party's eventual nominee. Kucinich crossed out the oath when he filed for a spot on the primary ballot. - Source 01/20/08 - The Impatience of the Google Generation A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation' - youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age - is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web. The findings also send a strong message to the government. Educational research into the information behaviour of young people and training programmes on information literacy skills in schools are desperately needed if the UK is to remain as a leading knowledge economy with a strongly-skilled next generation of researchers. - Source 01/20/08 - Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random The findings of an international team of biologists demonstrate that evolution is not a random process, but rather occurs through the natural selection of successful traits. The collaborative study by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, the U.S, France and Germany is published in the November 2007 issue of Current Biology. - Source 01/18/08 - Self Running 900 Watt Fueless Electrical Generator World Improvement Through The Spirit Ministries showing initial activation & then a self-running electrical motor generator combination with 900 net watts output. This is a result of studying the pioneers such as Tesla, Moray, Hendershot and 20 years work by a team of top scientists along with several million in R & D. For more information contact wits2014@yahoo.com (via zpenergy.com) - Youtube Video - Source 01/18/08 - Witricity broadcast electricity closing on Tesla (up to 16 feet!) In a dramatic breakthrough that could change the way we use electricity, scientists have made a 60-watt light bulb glow by transmitting energy to it wirelessly. A series of successful experiments conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests otherwise, however. MIT physicists believe they can project a magnetic field from a length of wire whose ends nearly touch. The gap between the ends makes electrons surge back and forth at a specific rate, creating a magnetic field with a characteristic frequency. Since the electrons in a matching coil would have the same frequency, they would pick up the magnetic field. To prove their theory, the physicists -- who dubbed the process WiTricity -- used a pair of copper coils with a 2-foot diameter. One was a transmitter attached to a power source, the other a receiver placed seven feet away and attached to a light bulb. When the power to the transmitter was turned on, the bulb lit up. The process, MIT assistant physics professor Marin Soljacic tells The Associated Press, is "very reproducible. We can just go to the lab and do it whenever we want." A wireless power system would have limited range, and the range would be even shorter for smaller receivers. But the research team calculates that an object the size of a laptop could be recharged within a few feet of the power source. Theoretically, scientists say, placing one source in each room could provide coverage throughout your home for a host of devices, including phones and laptop computers. / 1 - Power from mains feeds copper antenna. 2 - Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4mhz, emitting electromagnetic waves. 3 - 'Tails' of energy from antenna travel up to 5m (16.4 feet). 4 - Electricity picked up by mobile's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4mhz. - Source 01/18/08 - Instant Boot-Up Device VM, a startup based in Silicon Valley, has a product that circumvents the everlasting boot-up. The company has recently released a tiny piece of software that, when integrated with common computer hardware, gives users the option to boot either Windows or a faster, less-complex operating system called Splashtop. Depending on the hardware and Splashtop settings, a person using the software--which is based on the open-source operating system Linux--can start surfing the Web or watching a DVD in less than 20 seconds, and, in some cases, in less than five. Lengthy boot-ups on Windows machines occur for a number of reasons, explains Ben Chong, senior architect at DeviceVM. "First of all," he says, "Windows is pretty big." This means that it has megabytes of instructions to follow--from opening up applications to checking what's in memory. Most computers also come with extra software that Windows automatically loads at startup. "In many cases, Windows PC comes with a whole bunch of stuff you don't need," Chong says. "Starting all of the programs takes a lot of time." - Source 01/18/08 - Contact lenses with circuits Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes - visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go. Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Drivers or pilots could see a vehicle's speed projected onto the windshield. Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see. The prototype device contains an electric circuit as well as red light-emitting diodes for a display, though it does not yet light up. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the animals showed no adverse effects. Ideally, installing or removing the bionic eye would be as easy as popping a contact lens in or out, and once installed the wearer would barely know the gadget was there, Parviz said. The prototype contact lens does not correct the wearer's vision, but the technique could be used on a corrective lens, Parviz said. And all the gadgetry won't obstruct a person's view. "There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation," Parviz said. Future improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens. The researchers hope to power the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens, Parviz said. A full-fledged display won't be available for a while, but a version that has a basic display with just a few pixels could be operational "fairly quickly," according to Parviz. - Source 01/18/08 - Insane and Moronic Quote Of The Day Mike "Mike" Huckabee sez: "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." - Source 01/18/08 - Razor Blade Re-Sharpener - $19.98 Save a Blade Save money every time you shave! Get up to 200 close shaves with a single blade. Cordless electric sharpener glides across single or multi-blade razor cartridges converting used, dull blades into razor-sharp blades in seconds with push button operation. Reusing the same blade makes it easy to save a dime every time you pick up your razor. It might work, but whenever I see the As Seen On TV logo, I figure it must be crap. It's sold out, but is expected to be back in stock in mid-March. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 01/18/08 - Google.org Reveals Five Focus Areas Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, today announced the five core initiatives that it plans to focus on over the next five to ten years. The programs will receive more than $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners from Google.org. The five initiatives Google.org will focus on: 1. Predict and Prevent - using technology to predict and prevent the spread of diseases before they become local, regional, or global crises, by identifying "hot spots" and enabling a rapid response. Focus areas include global health threats, humanitarian crises, biological threats, and climate variability. 2. Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services - improving the flow of vital information to improve basic services for the poor in India and East Africa. 3. Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises - creating programs to support small and mid-sized businesses in developing areas, beginning with Ghana and Tanzania. 4. Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal - working toward a goal of producing one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal, within years not decades. This program was launched in November, and will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. 5. Accelerate the Commercialization of Plug-In Vehicles (RechargeIT) - an initiative launched this fall that aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. - Source 01/18/08 - Hoverit Unveils MagLev Chair British company Hoverit, Ltd., has recently introduced "The Lounger," a chair that defies gravity by hovering a few inches above its base. The Lounger uses permanent magnets in the chair and base to life the chair in the air. The company has not released many details about how the magic is done, but they confirm that the chair gives the sensation of floating on air. The product is hand-built, and designed with state-of-the-art CAD software. The base of the chair floats up and down on two guide bars, presumably so that it won´t float away. The base has castor wheels to make the two-piece furniture easy to move. Thanks to the magnetic field it exudes, perhaps the floating chair will also have health benefits, the company suggests. According to its Web site, "Permanent magnets can also help back, muscular problems and headaches, so our furniture not only looks good - it may make you feel good too." - Source 01/18/08 - U.S. Buys Devices That See Concealed Weapons The devices will enable security people to SEE CONCEALED WEAPONS, even in crowds of people walking fast. The gadgets, called SPO threat detection system units, work by tossing very high-frequency waves at a crowd, then using special lenses and detectors to read the reflected radiation. The result is that concealed objects, such as guns, knives, bombs and iPhones show up as blurry on-screen images. Although it would be used like the X-Ray machine in the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, "Total Recall," the images won't be as sharp -- nor will people be shown as walking skeletons... - Source 01/18/08 - Electric Roach Motel PIC controlled roach motel. It's the first micro-controller project that I've seen devoted to exterminating a member of the insect world. A PIC 16F675 is used to generate 10 pulses at 400 volts per second. Crispy. / The timing for the power pulse to the inductor is critical to getting the best Zap from your nine volt battery. The longer the current is on, the higher the voltage. Once the inductor reaches saturation, however, you are just waisting power. Some versions of this circuit charged up a capacitor (C1) with multiple pulses. This allowed the PIC to monitor the high voltage and produce a regulated output. - Source 01/18/08 - Green Light for Human/Animal Hybrids "BBC News is reporting that two research facilities have been given the green light to create part human, part animal embryos. According the the report, 'Scientists want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs in a bid to extract stem cells. The embryos would then be destroyed within 14 days.' The decision to allow the embryos was made after research showed that people in large are OK with the idea." - Source 01/18/08 - Sensitive synthetic skin Researchers are developing a new ultrarealistic synthetic skin they hope will be wrapped around next-generation prosthetic arms. Made from a designer polymer peppered with carbon nanotubes, the skin will sense pressure and temperature and, if all goes as planned, deliver the sensations to "remapped" nerve endings on the chest. The research team, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NASA, and the National Institute of Aerospace, aim to have a a 6-square-centimeter swatch of the skin ready by the end of 2009. / They are also close to achieving the spatial resolution of human nerve cells, which can differentiate between two pinpricks 2 millimeters apart. The polymer composite so far has a resolution of 5 mm. - Source 01/18/08 - Corral CPU Hogs with Process Lasso Windows only: Freeware system tray application Process Lasso monitors your running processes for CPU hogs and reins them in before they take over and freeze up your computer. Like previously mentioned Process Tamer, Process Lasso does this by lowering the priority of those processes on a runaway train to freeze-ville. Unlike Tamer, Process Lasso also offers a ton of user customization, so you can set default priorities by process or other rules for how Process Lasso deals with CPU hogs, like "Make firefox.exe run only on CPU #1 each time its launched." - Source 01/18/08 - Bottled Water Vs. Tap Water Remember the drinking fountain, that once ubiquitous, and free, source of H2O? It seems quaint now. Instead, bottled water is everywhere, in offices, airplanes, stores, homes and restaurants across the country. We consumed over eight billion gallons of the stuff in 2006, a 10 percent increase from 2005. It's refreshing, calorie-free, convenient to carry around, tastier than some tap water and a heck of a lot healthier than sugary sodas. But more and more, people are questioning whether the water, and the package it comes in, is safe, or at least safer than tap water-and if the convenience is worth the environmental impact. Yes, some bottled water comes from sparkling springs and other pristine sources. But more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they're drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren't required to list the source on the label. The controversy isn't simply about tap vs. bottled water; most people drink both, knowing the importance of plenty of water. What they may not know is that some bottled water may not be as pure as they expect. In 1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. (This is the most recent major report on bottled water safety.) While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards. Since the report, no major regulatory changes have been made and bottlers haven't drastically altered their procedures, so the risk is likely still there. - Source 01/18/08 - Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence. The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state. Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states. The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help. - Source 01/18/08 - Ron Paul, Dr. No-body, beats Rudy and Fred--again Well, he's hanging in there. Not only that, but Rep. Ron Paul thumped two reputed Republican heavyweights in the Michigan primary -- former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ron Paul, the 72-year-old Texas congressman and ob-gyn who delivers babies and a strict view of the Constitution, beat Giuliani in Michigan. And beat him good. Not only that,.... he doubled Giuliani's totals of 24,000 votes or 2.8%, getting more than 52,000 votes or 6.3% of the total Republican ballots. Paul even beat Thompson this time, the real consistent conservative who was supposed to be the next Ronald Reagan until he actually announced his campaign in September. Thompson got about 31,000 votes or 3.7%, which is more than Rudy but still less than the nobody congressman with the libertarian views who few people but his passionate partisans took seriously months ago. He's often called Dr. No for his consistent congressional votes against spending. Paul was so written off that Fox News banned him from its recent debate in New Hampshire. Oops, now the Paulunteers are organizing a boycott of Fox sponsors in return for the snub, a move that Dennis Kucinich's fans are now calling for against MSNBC for barring him from Tuesday's Democratic debate in Las Vegas. - Source 01/18/08 - ACLU: Sex in Restroom Stalls Is Private In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy." That means the state cannot prove Craig was inviting an undercover officer to have sex in public, the ACLU wrote. The ACLU argued that even if Craig was inviting the officer to have sex, his actions wouldn't be illegal. "The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom," the ACLU wrote in its brief. The ACLU also noted that Craig was originally charged with interference with privacy, which it said was an admission by the state that people in the bathroom stall expect privacy. - Source 01/16/08 - Teenager invents air-powered perpetual car engine A student of the academic school in the city of Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Maruf Karimov, invented a “perpetual” car engine power by a very unusual kind of fuel. The student managed to start a conventional internal combustion engine with the help of air pressure. The fuel - air that is - flows into the engine from a special tank filled with air under high pressure. It is worthy of note that the tank refills itself automatically non-stop. The engine designed by 15-year-old boy can thus be described as perpetual. Karimov installed his invention on his friends’ old car and drove several hundreds of meters. The speed was very low, but the young engineer is certain that the output of the engine is only a matter of time and effort. The drawings and calculations of the Uzbek student have already been sent to specialists from Germany. It is not ruled out that Maruf Karimov will continue his research work in Germany, Fergana.ru reports. Scientists and engineers accept the possibility that the current understanding of the laws of physics may be incomplete or incorrect; a perpetual motion device may not be impossible, but overwhelming evidence would be required to justify rewriting the laws of physics. / The first example of air engine Karimov installed to the car and managed to drive several hundred metres in it. The young inventor is sure that increase of the propulsion unit power is just a technical matter. As he said, to reinforce the power many times he needs a special air tank made of superstrong materials. - Source 01/16/08 - Johnson Solid state Heat Engine Mr. Johnson, who has more than 100 patents to his credit, calls his invention the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion System, or JTEC for short. His JTEC was profiled recently in Popular Mechanics. Currently, even the best solar systems convert only about 30 percent of received solar energy into electricity - making solar more expensive than burning coal or oil. Mr. Johnson says he can achieve a conversion efficiency rate that tops 60 percent with a new solid-state heat engine. It represents a breakthrough new way to turn heat into power. With gasoline currently more than $3 a gallon, every driver can hope that's true. This engine, Johnson says, can operate on tiny scales, or generate megawatts of power. If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start. JTEC could potentially harvest waste heat from internal combustion engines and combustion turbines, perhaps even the human body. And no moving parts means no friction and fewer mechanical failures. - Source 01/16/08 - New Heat Pump system works in all Temperatures In 2008, a new-to-market invention created by a frustrated engineer is revolutionizing how consumers heat and cool their homes. The Acadia: Combined Heating and Cooling System from Hallowell International (http://www.gotohallowell.com), was born from the inventor's aggravation from ever-higher energy bills. This all-electric single system delivers a new level of efficiency and performance for both heating and cooling, dramatically reduces monthly energy bills and, by not using fossil fuels, eases a household's strain on the environment. Indeed, the Acadia outperforms conventional heating systems by 300 percent. From everyday homeowners to military housing contractors, consumers across the US and Canada are realizing the benefits of the Acadia. How does it work? Like inventing a better mousetrap, the inventor took his knowledge of traditional heat pump technology (which won't heat when temperatures drop below freezing), and improved it with his patented Opti-Cycle(TM) technology which enables the Acadia to run efficiently no matter what the weather outside -- even in temperatures as cold as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. - Source 01/16/08 - A tenfold improvement in battery life? Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries--used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones--as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours. The increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium--which holds the charge--that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture. - Source 01/16/08 - Super Diet Pill Invented Dr Kanner, a food-science researcher for the Israeli government, found that if polyphenols are taken with a meal, some of the fats eaten are not absorbed into the blood but discarded as waste. Polyphenols are also found in red wine, fruit and vegetables, and Dr Kanner said: "Some people already take enough with their food to reduce their fat uptake. However, others need help to get their fill. "This pill would allow us to indulge in something that would normally be bad for us." Dr Kanner added that his pill would be cheap and its effects immediate. He is now working with a manufacturer to produce it. A British Nutrition Foundation spokeswoman admitted "it could stop people putting on too much weight" but added: "We would not want to see such people give up fruit and vegetables totally.' Dr Kanner admitted his pill would not reduce all fats but would limit oxidised fats being absorbed. Oxidised fats, which are particularly damaging to our bodies, are found in all meats. - Source 01/16/08 - Cyborg Farmers Researchers at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have developed an exoskeleton for farmers. The idea is to assist the aging Japanese farmers in their daily routine by giving them greater strength to complete their work, much of which is manual labor. The robot suit for farmers enables a student to easily lift 20 kilograms of rice during a demonstration at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology on Wednesday. The suit, which is secured with belts, consists of a resin framework with eight motors to assist the movements of the knees, elbows, lower back and shoulders, making farm work easier. When pulling out a Japanese radish, for example, about 20 kilograms of instantaneous pressure is exerted on the knees and lower back, but when using the robot suit, only about half the force is used. "As the age of farmers increases, I wanted to develop technology that would lighten their burden," Toyama said. While machines are increasingly being used to cultivate farmland and plant rice, human power is still often relied on for tasks such as fruit picking and pruning, and transporting crops. During a demonstration, a graduate student easily picked up 20 kilograms of rice. It is possible to program the robot suit to match the type of work. With use of an independently developed ultrasonic motor, the weight of the equipment can be lightened to about 8 kilograms. Sensors and wireless devices will enable monitoring of the person wearing the suit and make it possible for people to communicate even when they are not working close together. The projected cost for each set is between 500,000 and 1 million yen, but developers expect to be able to lower the price to about 200,000 yen per suit if they can mass produce the product when it is commercialized. - Source 01/16/08 - Dreams as a Virtual Reality Training Center Research at the University of Wisconsin has produced yet another potential explanation for dreams. In essence, it sets the dreamscape a presenting a virtual reality playground within which a person is exposed to threatening situations. According to psychologist Antti Revonsuo, "the primary function of negative dreams is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations." The revelation came from research with REM sleep deprived rats that failed to respond to hazardous situations like normal rats. - Source 01/16/08 - Cheap Ethanol from Tires and Trash Yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, General Motors announced a partnership with Coskata of Warrenville, IL, a new company that claims it can make ethanol from wood chips, grass, and trash--including old tires--for a dollar a gallon. That's significantly less than it costs to make the biofuel from corn grain, which is the source of almost all the ethanol made in the United States. A bundle of hollow fibers is the heart of a new process for making ethanol from sources other than corn. Organic materials are heated up to form a mixture of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. When the bioreactor is in operation, the gases flow through the center of the fibers and feed bacteria growing on the outside. The bacteria convert the gases into ethanol. - Source 01/16/08 - Plan to recycle crematorium heat A crematorium in Greater Manchester is proposing to recycle the heat generated when its furnaces are cremating people's remains. Excess heats is produced by special equipment to filter emissions, such as mercury from people's fillings at Dukinfield Crematorium. Tameside Council believes that this extra heat could be used to warm the crematorium's chapel. - Source 01/16/08 - Sugar-Free Gum Could Cause Extreme Weight Loss Two German doctors presented case studies today suggesting that chewing too much sugar-free gum could lead to extreme weight loss of up to 20% of a person's normal body weight. The work, which appears in the journal BMJ, consists of two case studies (pdf). In the first, a 21-year old woman reported experiencing severe diarrhea four to twelve times per day. She'd lost 11 kilograms and had a body mass index of 16.6, substantially below normal. Patient interviews revealed she was chewing about 15 pieces of sugar free gum per day. She stopped chewing the gum and her symptoms disappeared. A middle aged man had similar symptoms and the same miraculous weight-gain upon cessation of gum chewing. - Source 01/16/08 - Brain scan tests fail to support validity of ESP The study was the first to use cutting-edge brain scanning called functional MRI to address the question of whether ESP powers exist, said Moulton, who has been interested in ESP research since he stumbled across some previous supporting scientific research that he found impressive. His study was designed to simultaneously detect three types of extra-sensory powers: direct knowledge of someone else's thoughts (telepathy), knowledge of the distant physical world (clairvoyance), and direct knowledge of the future (precognition). Each participant was placed in a brain scanner and sequentially shown two photographs. At the same time, the participants' friend, partner, relative or identical twin was shown one of the photos -- the ESP image -- on a computer screen in another room and asked to mentally "send" the image to the participant. The participant had to guess which of the two photos was being "sent" from the other room, and then was shown the ESP image again to test precognition. If ESP were real, the brain should have responded differently to the ESP image -- recognizing it as familiar. But, in all cases, when the researchers compared the scans, they saw precisely the same pattern of brain activation for the ESP and non-ESP images, meaning the brains responded the same. "Our results showed no difference, and therefore our results are evidence against the existence of ESP," Moulton said. - Source 01/16/08 - Cranberries are wonder drugs for women Two glasses of cranberry juice a day can effectively cure bladder infections, ulcers, cavities and viruses in women, says a researcher. Prof. Itzhak Ofek, a researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, has revealed that the red beverage has some additional medicinal qualities that can heal urinary tract infections, prevent cavities and lessens the reoccurrence of gastric ulcers in women. - Source 01/16/08 - Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during World War II but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies, reads like a conflation of the Da Vinci Code with Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. What if scholars can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Koran was not dictated by the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammad during the 7th century, but rather was redacted by later writers drawing on a variety of extant Christian and Jewish sources? That would be the precise equivalent of proving that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels really was a composite of several individuals, some of whom lived a century or two apart. The history of the archive reads like an Islamic version of the Da Vinci Code. It is not clear why its existence was occulted for sixty years, or why it has come to light now, or when scholars will have free access to it. It may be a very long time before the contents of the Bavarian archive are known. Some Koranic critics, notably the pseudonymous scholar "Ibn Warraq", claim that Professor Angelika Neuwirth, the archive's custodian, has denied access to scholars who stray from the traditional interpretation. Neuwirth admits that she has had the archive since 1990. The Muslim world will continue to treat Koranic criticism as an existential risk, and apply whatever pressure is required to discourage it - albino monks presumably included. But that is not the end of the matter. The Islamic world is forced to adopt an openly irrational stance, employing its power to intimidate scholars and frustrate the search for truth. Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, who directs the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French daily La Croix, "Muslims do not accept discussion about the Koran, because they say it was written under the dictates of God. With such an absolutist interpretation, it's difficult to discuss the contents of the faith." Throughout the Internet, Islamist sites denounce the work of a handful of marginalized scholars as evidence of a plot by Christian missionaries to sabotage Islam. - Source 01/16/08 - Manned Cloud Manned Cloud is a flying hotel proposed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud. The whale-shaped airship, developed with French national aerospace research body ONERA, will be able to accommodate 40 guests and have a range of 5,000 km. Manned Cloud will have a cruising speed of 130 km/h and a top speed of 170 km/h. Two two-deck cabin will contain amenities including a restaurant, a library, a fitness suite and a spa. There will also be a sun deck on top of the double helium-filled envelopes. Manned Cloud is an alternative project around leisure and travelling in all its form, economic and experimental, still with the idea of lightness, human experience and life scenarios as the guiding principles. The spiral of Archimedes is the driving force of this airship in the form of a whale that glides through the air. Manned Cloud is a hotel with a capacity of 40 passengers and staffed with 15 persons, that on a 3-day cruise in 170 km/h permits man to explore the world without a trace: to re-experience travelling, timelessness and enhance the consciousness of the beauty of the world - and to experience spectacular and exotic places without being intrusive or exploitative. For me this project sums up a way of thinking that is the stake of tomorrow. - Source 01/16/08 - New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread New genetic evidence supports the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from the New World, U.S. researchers said on Monday, reviving a centuries-old debate about the origins of the disease. - Source 01/14/08 - AERO $5 Million award program for New Energy Breakthrough The criteria for the Award are: * The invention must be already built, robust and running reliably, with a net exportable (usable) power output of at least 1 kilowatt or greater. * The system must use no power from the power grid and if batteries or capacitors are used, they must remain fully charged. * The system must create no greenhouse gases or other polluting emissions and must be a closed loop system (that is, the output energy is sufficient to run the energy needs of the system and also provide the minimum 1 kilowatt of usable net power.) * If it is a water-to-fuel system, the system must be able to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen to create enough on-demand fuel to run the system (again, closed-loop) and create the minimum 1 kilowatt of net usable power. * The system must be universal in its application and capable of working at any location. Solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal systems are excluded from the award because they are typically location sensitive and already exist. * The inventor must be willing to license the system to AERO, LLC. * The system must be able to pass performance and efficiency testing by three independent scientific groups and be fully reproducible from plans by an independent third party (AERO will sign a non-disclosure agreement with the inventor(s) as needed to assure confidentiality.) * The system must not use radioactive materials or other materials that are an environmental hazard or biohazard. * The inventor must be willing to bring the system to Virginia to be tested and this testing must be transparent and open (no hidden "black box" tests). The winning inventor or team will receive $200,000 up-front as a licensing award (see our sample licensing agreement) and will be guaranteed a minimum of $5 million in royalty payments within two years of the creation of a manufacture-ready, beta-tested system. If the current prototype needs further R and D to attain manufacture, UL listed readiness, AERO will provide the support to reach this state-of-the-art. (Thanks to Duncan Roads at Nexus Magazine for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Energy Harvesting Piezoelectric fiber composite transducers harvest mechanical energy and convert it into electrical energy. There are a number of advantages of piezoelectric fiber composite transducers over bulk ceramics: * Due to their composite nature, piezoelectric fiber composites are lighter, more flexible and robust than bulk piezoelectric ceramics. * ACI's piezoelectric fiber composites produce 500 V(p-p) (at resonance frequency of 35 Hz, 0.9lbf) that can charge a 400 uF capacitor to 50 V in less than 4 seconds, and have been configured to yield a continuous 145mW of power. * Higher piezoelectric voltage coefficients (g33) can be obtained from piezoelectric fiber composites than bulk piezoelectric ceramics. This means more power generated. * Transducers can be created to user defined shapes inexpensively (including complex shapes). Piezoelectric fiber composite transducers may be used singly, or multiple in parallel, to accumulate electric power over an extended period of time for energizing low power microelectronics. (Thanks to Dave B. the gravman for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Stanford Researcher Says EM Waves May Predict Large Earthquakes Antony Fraser-Smith, emeritus professor of electrical engineering and geophysics, say in 1989 he and his research team were monitoring such waves in the Yorba Linda Mountains. On October 5, 1989 their monitoring equipment detected a large signal, which stayed constant for the next 12 days. The radio wave spiked at 2 p.m. on October 17, increasing in magnitude by 20 or 30 times. The Loma Prieta earthquake struck three hours later at 5:04 p.m., inflicting 63 fatalities and extensive damage across the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions. Fraser-Smith concedes that because background EM waves would mask signals from small quakes, only significant quakes of 7.0 or above could be detected. Since it is precisely those quakes that cause the most damage, forewarnings could prove invaluable. He has called for federal funding to place 30 ultra-low-frequency monitoring equipment in 30 earthquake-prone locations around the globe. (Thanks to Bob Paddock for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Ford: Car owners are pirates if they distribute pictures of their own cars "The folks at BMC (Black Mustang Club) automotive forum wanted to put together a calendar featuring members' cars, and print it through CafePress. Photos were submitted, the layout was set, and... CafePress notifies the site admin that pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can't be reproduced without permission. So even though Ford has a lineup of enthusiasts who want to show off their Ford cars, the company is bent on alienating them. 'Them' being some of the most loyal owners and future buyers that they have. Or rather, that they had, because many have decided that they will not be doing business with Ford again if this matter isn't resolved." - Source 01/14/08 - Get 100 Gallons Of Heating Oil For Free Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants to give you 100 gallons of free heating oil to help survive the cold cruel capitalist winter. The hogshead of liquid warmth is available to anyone enduring a financial hardship who fills out a handy online form. - Source 01/14/08 - Dead Hearts Start Beating Again In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein jealous, US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding them with live cells, according to a study released on Sunday. If extended to humans, the procedure could provide an almost limitless supply of hearts, and possibly other organs, to millions of terminally ill people waiting helplessly for a new lease on life. Approximately 50,000 patients in the United States alone die every year for lack of a donor heart, and some 22 million people worldwide are living with the threat of heart failure. "The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said lead researcher Doris Taylor, director of the Centre or Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota. While there have been advances in generating living heart tissue in the lab, this is the first time an entire, three-dimensional bio-artificial heart has been brought to life. - Source 01/14/08 - California Seeks Thermostat Control The conceit in the 1960s show “The Outer Limits” was that outside forces had taken control of your television set. Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages. The proposed rules are contained in a document circulated by the California Energy Commission, which for more than three decades has set state energy efficiency standards for home appliances, like water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators. The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers’ preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities’ suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers’ wishes. Final approval is expected next month. - Source 01/14/08 - Amazing Chia for Energy and Weight loss Chia seed is an ancient superfood that is currently experiencing a glorious renaissance. The seeds were used by these ancient cultures as mega-energy food, especially for their running messengers, who would carry a small pouch of it with them. Chia has been called ‘Indian Running Food’ and gives an incredibly ’sustaining’ surge of energy… In Mexico they say that one tablespoon of chia seeds can sustain a person for 24 hours. Chia also happens to taste great, looks cute (like tiny dinosaur eggs) and is ready to eat really quickly, besides which it has an off-the-scale nutritional profile. Chia seeds are said to have: *2 times the protein of any other seed or grain, *5 times the calcium of milk, plus boron which is a trace mineral that helps transfer calcium into your bones, *2 times the amount of potassium as bananas, *3 times the reported antioxidant strength of blueberries *3 times more iron than spinach *copious amounts of omega-3 and omega-6, which are essential fatty acids. They are a complete source of protein, providing all the essential amino acids in an easily digestible form. They are also a fabulous source of soluble fibre. Like flax, chia is highly hydrophilic: the seeds absorb water and create a mucilaginous gel. They can hold 9-12 times their weight in water and they absorb it very rapidly - in under 10 minutes. Chia has been called a dieter’s dream food because when added to foods, it bulks them up, displacing calories and fat without diluting the flavour. Thus, someone can eat a typical serving, yet only consume about half the calories they might have eaten, because the food has been bulked up with chia. PLUS, the eater gets a bellyful of nutrient-rich superfood goodness, which hydrates and sustains them - it’s magic. - Source 01/14/08 - Video - How to make Fireballs you can handle Tutorial on how to make a fireball that you can hold in your hand, toss around, and amaze (not ignite) others with. - Source 01/14/08 - But Whatever You Do, Don't Legalize It A new study by Freakanomics guru Steven Levitt comes to some uncomfortable conclusions about prostitution in Chicago. First, Levitt finds that prostitutes are more likely to have sex with city police than they are to be arrested by them: They estimate that roughly 3 percent of all tricks performed by prostitutes who aren't working with pimps are freebies given to police to avoid arrest. In fact, prostitutes get officially arrested only once per 450 tricks or so, leading the authors to conclude that "a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one." Worse... When freebies given to gang members are factored in, about one in 20 tricks go solely for protection and the "privilege" of plying their trade. And worst-est... Just as with recent studies of Mexican and Indian prostitutes, Levitt and Venkatesh find that payments go up substantially when condoms aren't used. And plenty of johns are apparently happy to pay the premium: Condoms only get used about 20 percent of the time, the authors estimate. So every one of these problems is the result of prostitution being illegal, no? In Nevada's legal brothels, condom use is 100 percent. There's no "protection sex" for crooked cops or gang members, and there hasn't been a single case of HIV since 1988. (via reason.com/blog) - Source 01/14/08 - The Energy Non-Crisis VIDEO - How to Inflate Oil Prices Did you know Alaskan oil reserves are larger than any on earth? Did you know that oil, for better or for worse, isn't a NON-renewable fossil fuel; that it's actually Abiotic, which means it IS (present tense) CREATED BY THE MAGMA OF THE EARTH! In other words, PEAK OIL is a scam. Oil production in Alaska is estimated at approximately $3.00 a barrel! That would translate into $1.00 + per gallon!!!; which would ruin the global elite's domination plans! "Who controls the FOOD supply controls the people; who controls the ENERGY can control whole continents; who controls MONEY can control the world." Bilderberger, Henry A. Kissinger / REMEMBER FOLKS THE WORLD ELITE WANT TO GO INTO IRAN. THEY WANT YOU TO PAY $5-$8/GALLON FOR GASOLINE. THE IRAN WAR AND THE OIL SHORTAGE WILL BE USED AS A PRE-TEXT TO RAISE GASOLINE PRICES EVEN FURTHER. AND, IF THEY'RE NOT SUCCESSFUL IN THAT, AN ARTIFICIAL DISASTER CAN BE CREATED THAT TAKES OUT REFINERY CAPACITY.. MAYBE IT'S TIME TO MARCH EN MASSE ON WASHINGTON AND RETURN AMERICA TO A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE VS. BY THE CORPORATIONS FOR THE CORPORATIONS. (Thanks to InfoLink for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Quackbusting The Quackbusters - Free e-book Further to Opinion of the Quackwatch site here is more that demonstrates that "attacking, belittling, satirizing, castigating, vilifying, maligning" is the science of the rich and corrupt! To perpetuate a lie...That is that toxins and toxiods cure disease, is clearly is the reason that "Drug makers spend more on marketing than research: study" like $57 billion +. With figures like that Imagine how much they rack in profits? "The authors say their figure of $57.5 billion US is likely an underestimate, citing other avenues for promotion such as ghostwriting of articles in medical journals by drug company employees, or the off-label promotion of drugs." (Thanks to Chris Gupta for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - MMS - some Incredible Claims (Free eBook) This Miracle Mineral Supplement (MMS for short) was discovered in 2000 by Jim Humble. At the time, he was using activated Oxygen water, which have been around for 80 years and consists of Sodium Chlorite in distilled water to cure a large percentage of Malaria victims in Africa and South America, as well as eliminating parasites and numerous other weird diseases you often hear about from third world countries. Jim was not satisfied with partial success and his research led him to discover that if you mix a citric acid solution (or lemon juice, or vinegar) with the Sodium Chlorite, and wait 3 minutes to activate, it would produce Chlorine Dioxide, perhaps the worlds best pathogen killer of all time. He had 100% cure rate of over 75,000 malaria patients and 388 out of 390 documented aids patients. It was achieved by using the MMS to create Chlorine Dioxide. Additionally, countless Aids, Hepatitis A, B and C cases were cured.- Not just improved, cured! Why haven't I heard about this? (You ask) Because a simple inexpensive cure is suppressed by the pharmaceutical companies, and the FDA here in the U.S., especially if it is easy to obtain, is dirt cheap and can be made in your kitchen. In other words, there is no money in it since it is a fairly quick and cheap cure, not a drug you must buy forever! As most of you know, Cancer, Diabetes, ulcers, Lyme disease, pain of all types and even arthritis is said to be caused by microbes. What you may not know is thatmicrobes are now thought to be "pleomorphic". (Please remember this term-there will be a quiz later.) Pleomorphic means that a benign (that means harmless) microbe can mutate into bacteria, viral forms. fungus and then back to a virus or that the same microbe can take on different morphologies; for instance the most common Lyme microbe, Borrelia burgdorferi can exist balled up in a capsule or cyst form or can exist in a cell wall-deficient form know as the L-form as well as in two other forms. In other words, microbial form is environmentally dependant. These buggers are smart and it is the reason why antibiotics (which are only good for killing certain bacteria) are often totally ineffective-- especially when Dr's are trying to kill a virus with an antibiotic. Fortunately for each of us individually and for mankind in general, Chlorine Dioxide does not care what the pathogen is be it a virus, bacteria, fungus, mold or parasite--it will kill it---dead-sayonara. And guess what, a two year supply is about $20. (About the price of your co-pay for Viagra) Is it safe? Yes. Extremely safe. It is not the same as Chlorine added to the city water supply to sterilize the water. That Chlorine will form all types of "Chlorides" which are often carcinogenic and have shown to cause arthrosclerosis. (A big word that means artery problems). Inside the body, chlorine dioxide breaks down into 2 oxygen atoms and a minute amount of table salt, when it is finished killing the bad guys. Then it is excreted from the body within a few hours. (Thanks to Rueben Joswiak for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - I Want to Live In a Surveillance Society Surveillance technology is on the rise. Powerful organizations -- law enforcement, corporations, governments and others -- have demanded and won their right to videotape the public, often secretly. They do this in order to hold individuals accountable for their actions. Yet the rights of individuals to use similar technology to do the same are often restricted. Why should shoppers, pedestrians, bank customers and citizens be held accountable, but politicians, police, judges and others are not? What kind of democracy is that? As we fight and argue, vote and campaign for keeping private business private, let's also make sure we claim and win the right to use our own ubiquitous camera phones, recording devices and other technologies to KEEP PUBLIC BUSINESS PUBLIC. UPDATE: This article has been SLASHDOTTED! - Source 01/14/08 - Shattering Viruses (Catching up with Royal Rife!) A new study is trying to establish the intrinsic vibration modes of capsids---the protein shells of virus particles that package its genetic material---with a view toward rupturing them and thereby killing the pathogenic virus. If the capsid resonant frequencies could be determined, then possibly light or sound waves might be used to shatter the capsids the way the opera singer Enrico Caruso supposedly shattered wine glasses by sustaining a note at exactly the resonant frequency of the glass. This approach to attacking viruses is alternative to treating them with chemicals, which is not always effective; furthermore, the chemicals can do damage to healthy cells, or the viruses can mutate and defeat chemical defenses. Hence the importance of attempting to undo viruses with mechanical means. Eric Dykeman and Otto Sankey, physicists at Arizona State University, are modeling capsid vibrations at the atomic level for comparisons with experiments being performed by K.T. Tsen at ASU in which picosecond laser pulses are scattered from capsids. The capsids, which are mostly made of complex protein assemblies, will typically absorb some of the laser light, a process which causes them to vibrate. The rest of the laser beam, its energy somewhat depleted, will be downshifted in frequency. This allows observers to deduce the resonant frequency of the capsids. By staging the short laser pulse in different ways, a whole catalog of capsid resonant frequencies can be made. (Thanks to Vlad for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Nano-magnets aim to replace drugs Last year electromagnetic fields were shown to cure cancer in rats, and this year magnetic fields were shown to reduce swelling after injuries. Now, biomedical engineers working with a physicist at Harvard University have demonstrated magnetic nanoparticles that can bind to the same cell receptors as do drugs and trigger the same effects in the presence of a magnetic field--albeit without the side effects of pharmaceuticals. The particles used in the study measured just 30 nanometers in diameter, with a five nanometer core, and were coated with antigens that can only bind to cell receptors that have specific antibodies. The nanoparticles remain dormant until activated by an external magnetic field, which causes them to cluster together, mimicking the effect of drugs, thereby triggering a cascade of biochemical signals inside the cell. The specific cells tested by the medical researchers are called "mast" cells, which open pores in cells that allow calcium to flow inside. Because an influx of calcium can initiate signals traveling down nerves, the researchers hope to eventually use the technique to control physiological processes, such as heart rhythms and other muscle contractions. Because the metallic particles are paramagnetic, then can be magnetized and demagnetized over and over again, enabling the technique to be used in place of a physical pacemaker. For instance, a diabetic could trigger insulin production in his or her own body by stimulating their own internal gland, rather than taking a shot. (Thanks to Bob Paddock for sharing this, asking 'Did magnets just become FDA regulated drugs?' - JWD) - Source 01/14/08 - Microchip implants cause fast-growing, malignant tumors in lab animals The Associated Press will issue a breaking story this weekend revealing that microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs, says privacy expert and long-time VeriChip opponent Dr. Katherine Albrecht. As the AP will report, a series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumors originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices, the researchers said. Albrecht first became aware of the microchip-cancer link when she and her "Spychips" co-author, Liz McIntyre, were contacted by a pet owner whose dog had died from a chip-induced tumor. Albrecht then found medical studies showing a causal link between microchip implants and cancer in other animals. Before she brought the research to the AP's attention, the studies had somehow escaped public notice. (Thanks to Craig Smith for sharing this. - JWD) - Source 01/12/08 - The OC MPMM - Alsetalokin's Overunity? Video This is a repost of the original Alsetalokin's video showing how his implementation of overconfident's idea looks like so far. (The original video has been taken down by the autor, but he permitted reposting it by others.) Please note that this is not the final product, the "OC's Magnetic Perpetual Motion Machine" (which is a bit more complicated and, AFAIK, not unproven to work so far). I admit that this could cause some confusion, but this video really shows only some odd 'anomaly' observed during the construction and trying different configurations. There is no over-unity, no infinite long runs, so don't jump into conclusions. Magnetic perpetual motion machines can't possibly work, didn't you know? (via zpenergy.com) - Brightened Video - Source 01/12/08 - Prolong Your Life by 14 Years Between 1993 and 1997 researchers questioned 20,000 healthy British men and women about their lifestyles. They also tested every participant’s blood to measure vitamin C intake, an indicator of how much fruit and vegetables people ate. Then they assigned the participants - aged 45-79 - a score of between 0 and 4, giving one point for each of the healthy behaviours. After allowing for age and other factors that could affect the likelihood of dying, the researchers determined people with a score of 0 were four times as likely to have died, particularly from cardiovascular disease. The researchers, who tracked deaths among the participants until 2006, also said a person with a health score of 0 had the same risk of dying as someone with a health score of 4 who was 14 years older. The lifestyle change with the biggest benefit was giving up smoking, which led to an 80% improvement in health, the study found. This was followed by eating fruits and vegetables. Moderate drinking and keeping active brought the same benefits, Kay-Tee Khaw and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council said. - Source 01/12/08 - Mobile Phones with Built-in Mini Projectors Mobile phones with built-in mini projectors will launch later this year, according to 3M, which gave PC Pro a hands-on demonstration of the technology at CES 2008. The projector has a brightness of around 8-10 lumens, and is capable of displaying an image of up to 50 inches. The projector has a brightness of around 8-10 lumens, and is capable of displaying an image of up to 50in, although 3M's spokesperson Greg Roberts told us that, with perfect lighting conditions, it's possible to squeeze a 60in screen out of the projector. The projector's VGA resolution image is certainly impressive. Text from PowerPoint presentations is rendered sharply, photos are reproduced with lifelike skintones and colours, and little detail is sacrificed. Bright images did look slightly washed out, but the garish lights of the CES showfloor made it hard to block out ambient light in 3M's tiny booth, so we're prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. Roberts claims the projector can run for two hours continuously using a standard mobile phone battery, although you're hardly likely to watch a film on such a device. Instead, 3M envisages it will be used for impromptu business presentations, or for quickly sharing photos or short videos with others. - Source 01/12/08 - A Smarter Electrical Grid Researchers and utility companies are pushing the idea of systems that adjust household electricity use to ease periods of peak demand and cut consumers' bills. Researchers and utility executives have been pushing the idea of a smarter grid. Many homes already have computers hooked up to the Internet or other networks. So why not add appliances and other electricity-users as well? Throw in meters with enough brains to know the changing overall demand and the corresponding change in price for electricity, plus software and devices to control the appliances, and the whole grid can go from dumb to downright intelligent. Such a smart grid-connected to only those energy users who agree to it-brings a host of advantages. Household electricity use can be adjusted to ease, if not prevent, peak power loads. As renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar grow, the grid can be better adjusted to handle the fluctuations in power when the wind ebbs or clouds thicken. - Source 01/12/08 - $2,500, 50mpg Indian Car After months of rumors and tantalizing leaks Indian automaker Tata Motors has finally unveiled the Tata Nano -- its already legendary $2,500 car. As expected, the car that Tata claims will change the face of not only the Indian car market, but the global auto industry will be a four door, five seat hatch, powered by a 30 HP Bosch 624 cc four stroke engine mounted out back and mated to a CVT. The People's Car, designed with a family in mind, has a roomy passenger compartment with generous leg space and head room. It can comfortably seat four persons. Four doors with high seating position make ingress and egress easy. Yet with a length of 3.1 metres, width of 1.5 metres and height of 1.6 metres, with adequate ground clearance, it can effortlessly manoeuvre on busy roads in cities as well as in rural areas. Its mono-volume design, with wheels at the corners and the powertrain at the rear, enables it to uniquely combine both space and manoeuvrability, which will set a new benchmark among small cars. When launched, the car will be available in both standard and deluxe versions. Both versions will offer a wide range of body colours, and other accessories so that the car can be customised to an individual's preferences. The People's Car has a rear-wheel drive, all-aluminium, two-cylinder, 623 cc, 33 PS, multi point fuel injection petrol engine. This is the first time that a two-cylinder gasoline engine is being used in a car with single balancer shaft. The lean design strategy has helped minimise weight, which helps maximise performance per unit of energy consumed and delivers high fuel efficiency. Performance is controlled by a specially designed electronic engine management system. - Source 01/12/08 - Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms Within Minutes An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. Griffin and Mrak are pioneers in the field of neuroinflammation. Griffin published a landmark study in 1989 describing the association of cytokine overexpression in the brain and Alzheimer’s disease. Her research helped pave the way for the findings of the present study. Griffin has recently been selected for membership in the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a nonprofit organization of more than 200 leading neuroscientists, including ten Nobel laureates. “It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention,” said Griffin. - Source 01/12/08 - Red Wine Drug Shows Proof That It Combats Aging For the first time, scientists have proof in human subjects that a derivative of an ingredient in red wine combats some symptoms of aging. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the results here on Monday at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. Resveratol, naturally found in red wine, stimulates a gene known as SIRT1, which has been linked with extended lifespans in rodents. The new study is the first time similar effects have been replicated in humans. - Source 01/12/08 - An innovative business idea If you want to watch Nick having sex with a prostitute, he's happy to let you. The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet. Source 01/12/08 - Blog backup online BlogBackupOnline is a web application that provides backup of your blog content. If you back up at all, trying to manually back up your blog is complex and tedious. BlogBackupOnline allows you to register your blog with a few simple clicks, and then maintains a current copy of your blog content at all times by backing up your blog daily. Basic accounts come with 50MB of storage. - Source 01/12/08 - Marksman's Invention Leads Him To Ruin For years, marksmen have been using a technique called bump firing, shooting a semiautomatic rifle from the hip and allowing the weapon's recoil to pull the trigger. With federal regulations keeping fully automatic weapons out of their hands, it was one of the few ways for firearm enthusiasts to enjoy the thrill of firing a machine gun. If there was only a way to simulate that action, Bill Akins wondered, by creating a device that mechanized the recoil resistance to fire more rapid, and accurate, bursts of bullets. Thus, the Akins Accelerator was born.Bill Akins describes how his Akins Accelerator operates when a rifle is attached. The patented device, which allows target shooters to convert a rifle into a simulated fully automatic weapon, has been declared a machine gun by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Hudson man spent nearly a decade designing his Accelerator. He got a patent for his invention. Then he poured his life savings into marketing and producing it for distribution. In the era of gun control laws, the device promised to revolutionize target shooting. "They were selling like hotcakes," Akins said. "We were truly amazed by the response." That was until the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned the Accelerator - two years after approving it. To the ATF, the mechanism is an illegal converter kit that, if it fell into the wrong hands, could turn a run-of the-mill target rifle into a 700-round-per-minute killing machine. Under the threat of imprisonment, officials ordered Akins to cease production, turn over the recoil springs from his existing stock and hand over his customer list. And they didn't give him a dime in return. More than five years later, Akins is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. - Source 01/12/08 - French compressed air car set for take-off in India "It is clear that with oil at $100 a barrel this will force people to change their use of fuel and pollute less," inventor Guy Negre told Reuters in an interview at his firm Motor Development International (MDI), based near Nice in the south of France. "My car is zero pollution in town and almost no pollution on the highways," he added, saying the vehicle could travel 100 kilometres at a cost of one euro in fuel. The former Formula One motor racing engineer's invention depends on pressurised air to move the pistons, which in turn help to compress the air again in a reservoir. The engine also has an electric motor, which needs to be periodically recharged, to top up the air pressure. The bottles of compressed air -- similar to those used by divers -- can be filled up at service stations in several minutes. Tata, India's largest carmaker with revenue of $7.2 billion in its last financial year, concluded a deal in 2007, investing 20 million euros. Pre-production in India is set for 2008, Negre said. The vehicle, protected by some 50 patents, will cost some 3,500 to 4,000 euros. Using composite materials, it will weigh not more than 330 kilos and its maximum speed is 150 kilometres per hour. - Source 01/12/08 - Table Touch Screen Terminal to replace Waiters Ever find yourself unable to get the attention of a waiter? It can be frustrating. But soon that may be a problem of the past thanks to new tableside touch screens. "It's cooler placing your own order on the computer than having a waitress come up and do it," restaurant customer Amanda Rosengarten told CBS 2 HD. That's because the order goes directly from your fingertips to the kitchen or bar, eliminating the possibility of human error during the transaction process. The new technology is being used at uWink, the latest offering from the founder of Chuck E. Cheese. The company said the new system is providing faster service, fewer mistakes and fewer interruptions. "Whenever you want ... that extra glass of wine or a dessert … bingo, it happens right away," said Nolan Bushnell of uWink. "It seems a lot more immediate. If I happen to change my mind or need an additional dish, I can order it right away even if the server is busy doing something else," patron Julie Lightner said. - Source 01/09/08 - Eco-friendly lighting Designed by local inventor Graham Smith, the benches aim to replace traditional advertising in light-boxes outside stores. Low-energy "bio-luminescent material" powered by solar panels replaces wasteful light-bulbs in the advertising panels above the bench, which also gives customers a comfy spot to sit. Made largely from recycled plastic carrier bags, Grayhatch claims the benches have a zero carbon footprint and could each save 200 tonnes of pollution from entering into the atmosphere every year. "At the moment they use these big lightboxes outside supermarkets and they use millions of tonnes of carbon just illuminating adverts. They have fluorescent bulbs just burning off the grid. "Ours collects daylight and is switched on automatically at night and is environmentally friendly. - Source 01/09/08 - Video - Sumsing Turbo 3000 Multipurpose Cellphone The absolute best cellphone on the market today...hilarious! Thanks to the Sarge! - Source 01/09/08 - Solar Energy Soon to be Cheaper Than Coal The Nanosolar company is working to build the world’s largest solar cell factory in California (slated to be in full production in 2008), and the world’s largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is as thin as a layer of paint, while at the same time reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to only 30 cents per watt. For the first time in history, solar power will be cheaper than burning coal. Nanosolar won the Popular Science Innovation of 2007 award, and they plan on producing their first product next year. They have been able to reduce the price of solar power by 90 percent. This has the potential to radically change the equation when it comes to choosing your energy sources. Silicon Valley-based Nanosolar’s Powersheet was named innovation of the year by Popular Science. The Powersheet is a solar cell made with printing-press style machines that set down a layer of nanoparticle ink onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil. The panels can be made for about a tenth of what current panels cost and at a rate of several hundred feet per minute. Nanoparticle ink is a proprietary ink developed by Nanosolar that makes it possible to simply print the semiconductor of a high-performance solar cell on highly conductive yet low-cost foil. Nanosolar’s cells use no silicon and the company’s manufacturing process allow it to create cells that are as efficient as existing cells for as little as 30 cents a watt versus about $3/watt for existing silicon-based solar cells. For comparison purposes, to compete with coal that cost per watt has to be in the $1 per watt range. Nanosolar is backed by several heavy hitters including Google’s founders, Benchmark Capital, SAC Capital, GLG Partners, OnPoint Technologies (the US Army’s private equity fund), and others including a $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Drooling for a chance to invest in this company? Stand in line - the firm is privately held and is presently not accepting any new capital. - Source 01/09/08 - Microwave Gun Car Taser works up to 600 Feet Away A Pasadena, California company has created a device that will destroy a car’s electrical system and stop it dead in its tracks. Just one pulse from this beam disables cars up to 50 feet away. How does it work? One beam pulsed in a burst lasting just 50 nanoseconds disrupts your vehicle's electrical system. The radiation can overload wires, or damage or upset your car's central microprocessor. Their prototype is 5 feet long, 3 feet wide, 1 foot thick, and weighs just under 200 pounds. With proper funding, it may be possible to create a device weighing only 50 pounds that works from 600 feet away. It operates on the same general principle as a microwave oven, but at a 300 megahertz frequency, rather than your standard microwave oven, which operates at about 2.5 gigahertz. It is said to be non-harmful to humans. - Source 01/09/08 - Super Soaker Inventor Cuts Solar Power Costs Solar energy technology is enjoying its day in the sun with the advent of innovations from flexible photovoltaic (PV) materials to thermal power plants that concentrate the sun's heat to drive turbines. But even the best system converts only about 30 percent of received solar energy into electricity - making solar more expensive than burning coal or oil. That will change if Lonnie Johnson's invention works. The Atlanta-based independent inventor of the Super Soaker squirt gun (a true technological milestone) says he can achieve a conversion efficiency rate that tops 60 percent with a new solid-state heat engine. It represents a breakthrough new way to turn heat into power. / the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion System, or JTEC for short. This is not PV technology, in which semiconducting silicon converts light into electricity. And unlike a Stirling engine, in which pistons are powered by the expansion and compression of a contained gas, there are no moving parts in the JTEC. It’s sort of like a fuel cell: JTEC circulates hydrogen between two membrane-electrode assemblies (MEA). Unlike a fuel cell, however, JTEC is a closed system. No external hydrogen source. No oxygen input. No wastewater output. Other than a jolt of electricity that acts like the ignition spark in an internal-combustion engine, the only input is heat. Here’s how it works: One MEA stack is coupled to a high- temperature heat source (such as solar heat concentrated by mirrors), and the other to a low-temperature heat sink (ambient air). The low-temperature stack acts as the compressor stage while the high-temperature stack functions as the power stage. Once the cycle is started by the electrical jolt, the resulting pressure differential produces voltage across each of the MEA stacks. The higher voltage at the high-temperature stack forces the low-temperature stack to pump hydrogen from low pressure to high pressure, maintaining the pressure differential. Meanwhile hydrogen passing through the high-temperature stack generates power. “It’s like a conventional heat engine,” explains Paul Werbos, program director at the National Science Foundation, which has provided funding for JTEC. “It still uses temperature differences to create pressure gradients. Only instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or wheel, he’s using them to force ions through a membrane. It’s a totally new way of generating electricity from heat.” The bigger the temperature differential, the higher the efficiency. - Source 01/09/08 - A pledge to go a year without buying anything new Karen Heimdahl used to be part of the throngs that crowd area malls at Christmas. But this year, bound by the Compact -- a growing social movement in which members vow to buy nothing new for a year -- she hit used book stores and consignment shops. Last Christmas her husband received gadgets from Best Buy. This year he unwrapped a hand-powered coffee grinder that Karen scoured eight antique stores to find. - Source 01/09/08 - As commutes worsen, drivers seek solutions The fact remains that commuters want to use as little time as possible to reach work each morning and return home each evening, and they’d like to spend as little money as possible doing it. General Motors will exhibit the Saturn Flexstreme concept - a hybrid-electric car that’s expected to look like the Opel’s Flextreme concept car, which made its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show last September, and is similar in design to the Chevrolet Volt concept shown at last year’s Detroit show. The car is designed to consume as little fuel as possible while driving to the office. Upon reaching a congestion zone like those in London and Singapore - where it can be prohibitively expensive to continue driving but may be too far to park and walk - the Flexstreme driver and one passenger can park the car and complete the journey aboard the pair of Segway scooters that are stowed in the back of the car. The Flexstreme/Segway combination gives the driver the ability to park a car some distance from work without having to walk the rest of the way and without having to wrestle a bicycle out of the back. A better solution for commuting, however, is one-way sharing, where the car isn’t returned to the same spot. That return spot would ideally be near mass transit stations, because the problem many commuters have is that their homes and offices aren’t typically within walking distance of these locations... Shared cars could help with that problem, according to Chin. “You could have a massive fleet of them at the last subway station in suburbia,” he said. At the city end of the rail line, users might be able to use shared Segways to help whisk them the final distance to the office, he added. - Source 01/09/08 - Advanced Fuel Technology HPI's new technology covers the production of hydrogen from aluminum, water and a proprietary reactant additive using an advanced processing technique and formula. This new mixing technology -- which creates a different and faster reaction than previously used mixing technologies -- has made possible the 60% increase in hydrogen generation yields and 45% reduction in fuel production costs specified in HPI's news release of December 3, 2007. Cartridges filled with AlumiFuel(TM: 104.18, +1.14, +1.10%) powder are dropped into a reactor and when water is added, high purity hydrogen and steam are generated as a result of the chemical reaction. The hydrogen and/or steam can be fed into fuel cells, turbine-based power conversion modules, or directly into inflatable devices, such as weather balloons. HPI has filed a provisional patent application for the new technology, which is considered a separate invention and is the property of HPI. - Source 01/09/08 - Energy islands could use power of tropics Each island would be built on a floating platform and at its centre would be a plant that converts heat from the tropical sea into electricity and drinking water. Below deck would be marine turbines to harness energy from underwater currents and around the edge floating devices to provide wave power. Vegetable farms and homes for workers will complete the colony and the power will be piped back to be used on the nearest populated land mass. Inventor Alex Michaelis, who is working together with his father Dominic, an engineer, estimates that each island complex could produce 250MW. It would take more than 50,000 installations to satisfy current world demand for energy, but Michaelis senior believes it is not impossible. "If we consider that we are at war to find a new form of clean energy, wartime effort in world war two produced vast numbers of planes, tanks, ships and other armaments on both warring sides," he said. "20,300 Spitfires alone were built, making the construction of more than 50,000 of these plants seem a reasonable number." - Source 01/09/08 - Dr. Nakamatsu claims Cosmic Energy Converter for Power Dr. Nakamats House, completed in 2005, represents the love the inventor has for the earth. With its distinctive floppy-disk-shaped front door, the four-story concrete building is powered, Nakamats claims, by "cosmic energy," whose source is charged particles (such as the nuclei of atoms) arriving from outer space in rays at roughly the speed of light. A black "antenna" that covers most of one exterior wall collects this energy and distributes it to a converter that then produces enough electricity to power the entire facility and its roughly 30 guest rooms, which Nakamats says are used by scientific luminaries from around the world who congregate to share new ideas. Nakamats even boasts that his system is so prolific that he actually winds up selling excess electricity to Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). - Source 01/09/08 - Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares). Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good." But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed-in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors-growing them. "It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close." This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies. - Source 01/09/08 - Cellphone Microwaves cook Eggs Recently, news media has reported a study showing the radiation from cell phones is so full of energy they can be used to cook eggs. In the experiment, researchers placed one egg in a porcelain cup (because it is easy to conduct heat), and put one cell phone on one side and another cell phone on the other. The researchers then called from one cell phone to another and kept the cell phones on after connecting. During the first 15 minutes, nothing changed. After 25 minutes, however, the egg shell started to become hot and at 40 minutes, the surface of the egg became hard and bristled. Researchers found the protein in the egg had become solid although the egg yolk was still in liquid form. After 65 minutes, the whole egg was well cooked. The study shows how scary cell phone radiation is. People should try to avoid use of cell phones. Although so far no one has proved the radiation from cell phones can cause something clinically significant. By the same token, there has been no one who can disprove the existence of such a risk. Children should be forbidden from cell phone use because they still grow their brains and are particularly vulnerable to radiation. - Source / USSR banned microwaves over killing effect - There was a lawsuit in 1991 in Oklahoma. A woman named Norma Levitt had hip surgery, but was killed by a simple blood transfusion when a nurse "warmed the blood for the transfusion in a microwave oven!" Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. Two researchers, Blanc and Hertel, confirmed that microwave cooking significantly changes food nutrients. Hertel previously worked as a food scientist for several years with one of the major Swiss food companies. He was fired from his job for questioning procedures in processing food because they denatured it. He got together with Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Biochemistry and the University Institute for Biochemistry. They studied the effect that microwaved food had on eight individuals, by taking blood samples immediately after eating. They found that after eating microwaved food, haemoglobin levels decreased. "These results show anaemic tendencies. The situation became even more pronounced during the second month of the study". In addition, they found that the number of leucocytes increases after eating microwaved food - something which haematologists take very seriously, because this is often a sign of highly harmful effects, such as poisoning. - Source 01/09/08 - Advances In Edible Dishes You don't have to wash the dishes: I'll have the soup. And the bowl, please. A Birmingham food firm has started making bowls and plates out of dough. The idea is that diners enjoy a soup, chilli or curry, then eat the bowl too. David Williams, the managing director of Butt Foods, which has developed the idea, admits: "Our banks, our investors all thought we were crackers. But we've now proved them wrong." Bowls made out of bread certainly aren't new, but I guess being able to buy them ready-made is new. Here's a breakfast bowl, which contains bacon, sausage, and baked beans. - Source 01/09/08 - The Man in the trunk Trick I'm surprised this isn't more common. It's practically a perfect crime. Except this time they got caught: Sneaky driver, 'trunk accomplice' arrested. Lei, a young woman from Shanghai, walked out of the airport and hired a taxi to her downtown residence. About halfway home, the driver received an "urgent call" and told Lei that he would have to drop her off and turn back. He waived her fee, unloaded her luggage and helped her get another taxi. When she returned home, Lei discovered that her notebook computer had been removed from her luggage and called police. After a month-long investigation, police determined that the driver had hid somebody in the trunk specifically to steal luggage. Both the driver and the "trunk man" were arrested. - Source 01/09/08 - Vacuum to grow Hair In 1936, bald men had a treatment option: Use Vacuum to Aid Hair Growth. CAN SCIENCE restore hair to the bald? Startling results in the affirmative are reported in 500 cases treated with a new machine, developed by Dr. Andre A. Cueto, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Fourteen to twenty half-hour treatments are said in many cases, to produce the appearance of "fuzz," and from this point on the patient is declared to progress toward a normal growth of hair. Alternately applying air pressure and vacuum through a cap, the device, it is claimed, restores the functioning of the blood vessels that nourish the hair follicles. - Source 01/09/08 - Internet Porn Shown to Decrease Incidence of Rape Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law says that the correlation between a newly-documented drastic decline in sexual violence in the United States and a major increase in social access to pornography - most recently over the Internet - casts doubt on widely-accepted government findings on the causal connection between pornography and criminality and suggests that one impact of porn may actually be positive. - Source 01/09/08 - Video - North American Union & Vchip Truth Ron Paul warns of this and wants to take steps to stop it from becoming a reality, yet the other candidates say he is just another conspiracy buff. View Zeitgeist the Movie and the youtube Source 01/07/08 - Aerocivic - Modified Honda Civic @ 95miles/gallon I started this project after the Katrina-insired gas price runup since I have a long commute. I first learned to drive during the 1970's oil embargo and have been perfecting my hypermiling tenchniques ever since. My car is a 92 Civic CX, which I bought new, and was giving me low 60's to low 50's before I started aero modding it. The end result is a car with such low drag that the results of coastdown testing is linear out to 90mph (it coasts almost as well at 80mph as it does at 50mph). I have to get it over 90mph before I start to feel the wind load from high-speed driving. OEM max speed was 95mph. I have had it up to 100mph with plenty of power remaining at that speed (estimated top speed of about 140mph). Wind noise is much reduced from stock. Approximate mileage on a flat road at 85F, 95mpg at 30 to 65mph, 85mpg at 70mph, 65mpg at 80mph, 50mpg at 90mph. - Source 01/07/08 - New solar energy collector so efficient it works at night With this new nanotechnology, millions of extremely small twists of metal are molded into banks of "microantennas", which can be placed on almost any material, including plastic sheets. These spiral shaped "microantennas" are about 1/25 the width of a human hair. They are so small that they resonate from the interaction with the sun's infrared rays. This resonation can be translated into energy. During the day, the Earth soaks up a lot of this infrared energy, which is then radiated out at night -- enabling these microantennas to collect power even after the sun has set. Conventional solar panels can convert about %20 of what hits them into electricity. The research team behind this new tech believes they can hit an efficiency rating of about %80. Also, conventional solar panels are expensive to produce because the rely on high-grade silicon, which is becoming increasingly expensive. These new solar collectors can be manufactured for much less -- the research team aims "to make nanoantenna arrays as cheap as inexpensive carpet." But! It's not all worked out yet. A big stumbling block remains. While these solar collectors are able to collect solar energy, they are currently unable to transmit this energy into usable electricity. The solar infrared rays hitting the nanoantennas generate a current that has a frequency which oscillates ten thousand billion times a second -- which is far to great of an oscillation than standard electrical appliances can handle. (via zpenergy.com) - Source 01/07/08 - Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid. But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe. In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly. Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround - one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa - with one word: fertilizer. - Source 01/07/08 - If Your Hard Drive Could Testify ... Rummaging through a computer’s hard drive, the government says, is no different than looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit. “Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” Judge Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. “They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.” Computer hard drives can include, Judge Pregerson continued, diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and - the clincher, of course - information about reporters’ “confidential sources and story leads.” But Judge Pregerson’s decision seems to be headed for reversal. The three judges who heard the arguments in October in the appeal of his decision seemed persuaded that a computer is just a container and deserves no special protection from searches at the border. The same information in hard-copy form, their questions suggested, would doubtless be subject to search. An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there have to be some limits on the government’s ability to acquire information. “Under the government’s reasoning,” the brief said, “border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign.” That is, the brief said, “simply electronic surveillance after the fact.” There are all sorts of lessons in these cases. One is that the border seems be a privacy-free zone. A second is that encryption programs work. A third is that you should keep your password to yourself. And the most important, as my wife keeps telling me, is that you should leave your laptop at home. - Source 01/07/08 - Why I Believe Bush Must Go What are the facts? Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard. From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation. How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness? The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people. Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot. - Source 01/07/08 - Howard Johnson passed away January 2nd, 2008 Howard R. Johnson born June 1st, 1919, in Pound, Virginia, USA, famous for his PPM (Permanent Magnet Motor) patent, USP # 4,151,431, author of "The Secret World of Magnets" book (2dn edition - 2006) has died on the evening of Jan. 2, 2008 in Blacksburg, Virginia. "We don't grant patents on perpetual motion machines," said the examiners at the U.S. Patent Office. "It won't work because it violates the law of Conservation of Energy," said one physicist after another. But because, inventor Howard Johnson is not the sort of man to be intimidated by such seemingly authoritative pronouncements, he now owns U.S. Patent No. 4,151,431 which describes how it is possible to generate motive power, as in a motor, using only the energy contained in the atoms of permanent magnets. That's right. Johnson has discovered how to build motors that run without an input of electricity or any other kind of external energy! (via zpenergy.com) - Source 01/07/08 - China's farms struggle to meet growing demand As one analyst put it, a country larger than the United States will be created by new urban Chinese by 2020. And when they come to the cities, these new arrivals - almost instantly - start eating more protein. Now that they no longer grown their own food, and with more wages in their pocket, their diet changes. So Chinese people are eating less wheat and fewer grains in general because they are upgrading to meats, especially pork. But that pork comes from hungry pigs who consume a lot more grain. Of course, yields are getting better, so the same patch of land is growing more corn (maize), rice and soya bean than it once did. Already, the country that discovered the soya bean has to import most of its needs. And other crops will follow. The days of food self-sufficiency in China are numbered. So, like the rest of us, China will turn to Australia, Africa and South America to fill its belly. It is small wonder that food prices are climbing everywhere, not just here in China. There just is not enough of it to go around, so prices are rising - and will keep going up - until farmers plant more. - Source 01/07/08 - Ron Paul shocker: No more 'anchor babies' A controversial new anti-illegal-immigration ad by GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul has sent his libertarian supporters into high dudgeon, but it's getting rave reviews from border-security hawks, including some Homeland Security officials. In a surprise move, the strict constitutionalist has taken aim at the 14th Amendment as part of a proposal to control growing illegal immigration. U.S. Rep. Paul, R-Texas, proposes repealing the provision that gives automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S., even if their parents enter the country illegally. "Ron Paul wants border security now," his new campaign ad asserts. "Physically secure the border. No amnesty. No welfare to illegal aliens. End birthright citizenship. No more student visas from terrorist nations." - Source / N.H Republicans to Fox: No Ron Paul? No thanks! - In a press release, New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Fergus Cullen said, "We believe all recognized major candidates should have an equal opportunity to participate in pre-primary debates and forums. This principle applies to tonight's debates on ABC as well as Sunday's planned forum on FOX. "The New Hampshire Republican Party believes Congressmen Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter should be included in the FOX forum on Sunday evening. Our mutual efforts to resolve this difference have failed. Paul responded earlier to the snub by saying Fox News is "scared of me." They "don't want my message to get out, but it will," he told the Boston Globe's Primary Source blog. "They are propagandists for this war, and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative." Calling Fox's refusal to consider including his candidate "unfair," Ron Paul 2008 spokesman Jesse Benton said, "The New Hampshire Republican Party did the right thing by pulling its sponsorship." Source 01/07/08 - Examining the Amazing Free-Energy Claims of Dennis Lee In September of 1996, I saw a full-page newspaper ad promising a demonstration of amazing technologies, including one that will make free electricity from the air. On the night of September 23, I and a few other members of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT) went to see this "amazing" technology for ourselves. Thus began a five-hour, nonstop demonstration of a whole array of curious machines in the middle of the arena. The charismatic Lee said he has been victimized by a massive international, multigenerational conspiracy to keep such amazing technologies out of the marketplace. The audience gladly signed "declarations of energy independence" that boldly declared they would no longer accept governmental suppression. His presentation focused more on his unique blend of patriot politics and religion than on proof of his claims. He claimed he couldn't make good on his advertised promise to demonstrate a wonderful radiation-neutralizing invention by Yull Brown. Apparently, he had inside knowledge that government agents had infiltrated the presentation, ready to make arrests. Lee claims to have invented the world's most efficient heat pump, but conspirators sabotaged his efforts, stole his company, and incarcerated him. For about ten years, Lee has claimed that he can produce free energy from ambient heat by connecting his heat pump to a Fischer low-temperature phase-change machine. Not surprisingly, the audience warmed to the assertion that God had given Lee the final technical help to make this possible. (In Lee's literature, he quotes many of God's exciting revelations to him.) Unfortunately, Lee's only proof of this device was to have an audience member confirm that one part of the machine was hot. Each new bold pronouncement was interrupted by ecstatic applause. Lee promised that people paying $10,000 to become dealers would be installing smaller versions of this machine in private homes across America before the end of the year. Since then, he has claimed that two thousand dealers signed up but that there will be a few delays. He seems not to have told his latest two thousand dealers that all but six of two thousand dealers of a similar effort years ago gave up on him. - Source 01/07/08 - Forget oil, the new global crisis is food A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday. Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry. "The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said. The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year. Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year. Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best finish since June 1996. This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing. - Source 01/05/08 - Add KeelyNet News content automatically to your site Have you been noticing the growing popularity of RSS, RDF and ATOM feeds? Would you like to easily add them to your web-site to create sticky content thats always updated? Then you've come to the right place, RSS-to-JavaScript.com was designed to easily convert any valid RSS, RDF or ATOM feed into easy to implement Javascript. No XML or programming expierence is necessary. Use our 100% free tool to easily insert dynamically updated RSS, RDF and ATOM feeds into any web page, blog or content management system. / Check out this page to see how it would look on your website or blog. - Source 01/05/08 - Magnetic Field Can Reduce Swelling A recent study by University of Virginia researchers demonstrates that the use of an acute, localized static magnetic field of moderate strength can result in significant reduction of swelling when applied immediately after an inflammatory injury.In the study, the hind paws of anesthetized rats were treated with inflammatory agents in order to simulate tissue injury. Magnetic therapy was then applied to the paws. The research results indicate that magnets can significantly reduce swelling if applied immediately after tissue trauma. Since muscle bruising and joint sprains are the most common injuries worldwide, this discovery has potentially significant implications. "If an injury doesn't swell, it will heal faster - and the person will experience less pain and better mobility," says Skalak. This means that magnets might be used much the way ice packs and compression are now used for everyday sprains, bumps, and bruises, but with more beneficial results. The ready availability and low cost of this treatment could produce huge gains in worker productivity and quality of life. In their initial study, magnets of 70 milliTesla (mT) field strength - about 10 times the strength of the common refrigerator variety - were placed near the rats' blood vessels. Quantitative measurements of blood vessel diameter were taken both before and after exposure to the static magnetic fields - the force created by the magnets. Morris and Skalak found that the force had a significant effect: the vessels that had been dilated constricted, and the constricted vessels dilated, implying that the magnetic field could induce vessel relaxation in tissues with constrained blood supply, ultimately increasing blood flow. - Source 01/05/08 - HydroPak Fuel Cell Could Replace Generators, Batteries The HydroPak fuel cell is a portable power generator that can provide up to 14 hours of power with a single disposable cartridge. The $20 cartridges are water-activated, and have a shelf life of several years. The device, which is still in beta, is relatively inexpensive for a fuel cell product, costing around $400 in addition to the disposable cartridges. The HydroPak also has zero emissions, is lightweight, and operates with minimal noise. A water-activated cartridge can crank out 400 Watts through an AC outlet and two USB ports, so it can be used to power everything from portable lights, notebook computers, portable televisions and ad hoc communications networks, for a total of 14 continuous hours. - Source 01/05/08 - Patented VTOL Technology To Begin Building Prototypes Roadable Aircraft International (RAI) - a VTOL aerospace design engineering firm, has begun development and testing of its patented VTOL Vertical Take off and Landing technology. RAI previously co-developed a vehicle that could take off and land like a helicopter but be able to land in close proximity to buildings, allowing urgent response and rescue where helicopters are unable to land due to exposed propellers. Current VTOL Prototypes are refinements from over 16 years of research and four VTOL prototypes including the Best Invention of the Year at the 1993 Discovery Channel Invention Convention. - Source 01/05/08 - Invention to 'cut' water bills The device called ‘Leakfrog’ is attached to a water meter overnight and detects the amount of water escaping from customers pipes. Customers will then be able to get their leaks fixed and reduce their bills. Thames Water has to find ways of reducing the problem of leaking pipes, as the company currently loses 695 million litres of water every day. “Leaks are not only an unnecessary waste of water, but left undetected can add hundreds of pounds to bills and cause damage to property. “Often customers are unaware if they have leaking pipes. “Leakfrog will help identify them, but we would also advise any customers who have seen bills rise by unusually high amount to contact our customer centre or a qualified plumber.” The device is smaller than the other leakage detection devices used by Thames Water and it gives a more accurate reading. - Source 01/05/08 - Skin Cancer cream Philippine doctors and world class inventor awarded for innovative topical cream to treat skin cancer. Each year, millions of people all over the world are diagnosed with the most common forms of skin cancer - basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. World cancer societies says tens of millions of new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year. Sunlight provides much of what is beneficial and even necessary to life and good health, but tanning and burning are not among these benefits. Sunburn and ultraviolet (UV) light can damage the skin and this damage can lead to skin cancer. A skin cancer cream known as the DeBCC was developed and studied by Philippine General Hospital (PGH) doctors in partnership with a famous inventor and won the top prize during the 93rd annual convention of the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons held in New Orleans, Louisiana, the most prestigious forum for the presentation of research and innovations in surgical treatment in the world. The Philippine entry, the DeBCC, formulated from the extract of cashew nuts, was voted the "Best Scientific Exhibit for 2007." - Source 01/05/08 - Transferring Music From Legally Bought CD to Computer is Illegal In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings. - Source 01/05/08 - Low-energy bulbs 'worsen rashes' Fluorescent bulbs can exacerbate skin rashes in people with photosensitive skin conditions, experts said. Several groups including the British Association of Dermatologists called for exemptions to allow those affected to continue using traditional bulbs. Dr Colin Holden, President of the British Association of Dermatologists, said: "It is important that patients with photosensitive skin eruptions are allowed to use lights that don't exacerbate their condition. "It is essential that such patients are able to protect themselves from specific wavelengths of light emitted by fluorescent bulbs, especially as they are often trapped indoors because they can't venture out in natural sunlight." Health conditions which can involve some form of light sensitivity, include the auto-immune disease lupus, the genetic disorder Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), certain forms of eczema and dermatitis, photosensitivity, and porphyria. - Source 01/05/08 - Corrupt Last Year Judicial Watch's annual list: Washington's Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2007. They are (in alphabetical order): * Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) * Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) * Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) * Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) * Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) * Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) * I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby * Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) * Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) * Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). That list has a few familiar names. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 01/05/08 - Fruit Flies Prove that Alcohol Makes People Gay Fruit flies that develop homosexual tendencies when drunk may help reveal how alcohol loosens human sexual inhibitions, claim researchers. Researchers got the flies drunk on the fumes of an ethanol-doused cotton pad placed at the base of the chamber, and filmed them using a camera held above the Flypub's transparent ceiling. Male Drosophila will normally only court females, following them and vibrating their wings in a courtship "song", before attempting to copulate. The first time they were exposed to alcohol, groups of male flies became noticeably intoxicated but kept themselves to themselves. But with repeated doses of alcohol on successive days, homosexual courtship became common. From the third day onwards, the flies were forming "courtship chains" of amorous males. But do fruit flies really provide a good model for what happens in the inebriated human brain? Heberlein, who works on both flies and mice, believes they do. "What is cool is that there is such a similarity," she says. "I am surprised by the parallels." - Source 01/05/08 - Auroras are Gravitationally Powered Lights The Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis are essentially gravitationally powered fluorescent lights. They occur in two oval shaped rings that encircle the polar regions. These regions represent the optimum intersection of the Earth's gravitational field with the Earth's magnetic field. In the equatorial regions where the Earth's gravitational field intersects the Earth's magnetic field at right angles, the magnetic field is at its weakest. At the magnetic poles where the magnetic field is at its strongest, it is also nearly parallel to the gravitational field. The Earth's gravitational field is essentially just a weak electric field. (via zpenergy.com) - Source 01/05/08 - His parasite theory stirs a revolution "What if I told you," Joel Weinstock said, "there were countries where the doctors had never seen hay fever?" It is another piece of evidence, another "aha" moment in the global medical mystery that Weinstock - the chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts-New England Medical Center - has narrowed down to one chief suspect: the worms. Weinstock, 59, specializes in studying why immunological diseases - everything from hay fever and asthma to diabetes and multiple sclerosis - are on the rise in developed countries but remain relatively uncommon in undeveloped countries. He believes these diseases, many of which were almost unheard of 100 years ago, are because of changes in our environment, a lack of exposure to something. And he thinks that something may be the worms. - Source 01/05/08 - Build a PVC Pipe Laptop Stand If you don't want to drop cash on a pricey laptop stand like the Elevator, snap together your very own with some PVC pipe and joints. Instructables user alceste shows you how. The result isn't adjustable like commercial ones (boo), but it does let you hide cables inside the pipe (neat!). / (I have an old laptop I like to use for writing articles but its a pain to use for prolonged periods, so I add an external keyboard and mouse which makes it a breeze to use...definitely going to build one of these to use. - JWD) - Source 01/05/08 - Pot Writes About Kettle More words of wisdom from Rabbi Schmuley: When Religion Becomes Superstition. Two disturbing trends are emerging in Western religion. The first is religion as superstition. The second is the inability of faith to ennoble the character of its practitioners as religion becomes more divisive and judgmental. The two are intimately intertwined. Superstition is not about G-d but self-preservation and can scarcely be called upon to inspire altruism... Ours ought never be a religion of superstition catering to human frailty and weakness. Religion dare never take advantage of people's vulnerabilities and fears. Rather, our purpose is to inspire people to righteous action. Religion, by its very nature is superstition. Is there a religion that's more superstitious than the Jewish religion? I don't think so. (via j-walkblog.com) - Source 01/05/08 - NOAA confirms start of new sunspot cycle A new solar cycle is under way. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday that the first sunspot of a new 11-year cycle has appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere. The frequency of sunspots rises and falls during these cycles, and the start of a new cycle indicates they are likely to begin increasing. - Source 01/03/08 - Energy Tower: Sucking Greenhouse Gases Into the Vortex If built in a hot and dry climate, close to a body of water, the tower will trap warm air traveling above it, and as it comes into contact with the cool lining of the tower (cooled by water), the air will fall. As the air cools, it will drop into lower stations in the tower, and drive turbines that will produce electricity. “It’s a radically simple idea. We could easily produce between 15 to 20 times the total electricity the world uses today,” he says, noting that this magic tower will not only produce power, but much more. “We can produce cheap desalinated water, we can irrigate the desert, we can produce bio-fuel, we can boost aquaculture.” - Source 01/03/08 - Research explores role of hydrogen peroxide in cell health Hydrogen peroxide, the same mild acid that many people use to disinfectant their kitchens or treat cuts and abrasions, is also produced by the body to keep cells healthy. For example, when the immune system is activated in response to bacteria, large amounts of hydrogen peroxide are produced by certain cells to fight the infection. Lowther and colleagues studied how a molecule known as peroxiredoxin (Prx) helps control levels of the agent. The role of Prx is important because if the levels of hydrogen peroxide become too high, the cell’s DNA and other proteins can be damaged. Scientists suspect that this and similar processes are what leads to cancer, diabetes and other disease. - Source 01/03/08 - Pure water through pedaling Julia Coffin and Alice Arsenault, 17-year-old Concord High seniors, learned of the conditions in third-world countries, and they came upon an upsetting statistic: 5,000 children die each day from waterborne illnesses. Their invention works like this: The bike is made stationary, and the back wheel is attached to a simple pump that looks like a tiny steamboat paddlewheel. The pump is attached to a hose, which sucks up contaminated water when the bike is pedaled. The hose leads to two pieces of PVC pipe. The pipes, upright in a wooden stand, are where the water is filtered. Inside are pieces of smashed bricks or pottery coated with colloidal silver. The brick particles filter out dirt and sand; the colloidal silver kills bacteria. Colloidal silver is somewhat controversial: It isn't considered safe by the Food and Drug Administration due to possible side effects, but it is an inexpensive way to clean water. The result is water that's safe enough to drink, made possible by a machine that's easy to build. It took Coffin and Arsenault less than four hours to assemble, and the parts, sans bike, cost about $25. "The whole point of the project is to make something that could be reproduced in developing countries," Coffin said. She and Arsenault hope to win enough money from either contests or civic organizations to build some working prototypes and set them up in third-world countries this summer. - Source 01/03/08 - Acronis Backup and Echo Clone Acronis True Image 11 Home, a $50 backup program for Windows that captures a true image of what you've just done. The program comes with lots of extras that many people have asked us about over the years, like File Shredder and Drive Cleanser. File Shredder makes your discarded files unrecoverable; Drive Cleanser completely wipes your hard drive clean, for that moment when you're going to give your old computer away. The one thing you can't do with the True Image home version -- or Windows backup software, either, for that matter -- is clone one PC's drive and transfer it to a new computer or an entire office network. But you can do this with True Image Echo Workstation for $80, plus a $30 add-on called Universal Restore. You can then take the whole shebang -- everything on your hard drive -- and transfer it to a new computer, even if that computer is just "bare metal," as they say. A free trial of Echo is available at Acronis.com. (January Week 1) - Source 01/03/08 - Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest ends The first Innovate or Die contest has come to an end. We will announce the winners on January 15, 2008. The Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest is designed to inspire innovation and environmental change by highlighting the benefits of cycling in an unprecedented way. The challenge is to invent and build machines that transform zero-emission human energy into new and useful purposes, one pedal stroke at a time. Entries are self-documented and submitted in a video format detailing machine, function and purpose. To register for the contest, see entry details at innovate-or-die.com. The last day for submission is Saturday, December 15th, 2007. Inventors must be 18 years or older and residents of the U.S., Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain or the U.K. - Source 01/03/08 - Scientist prolongs life of High Intensity Lamps Mr Biswas claims to have invented the “Dragon Kink Effect”, which prevents the early switching life failure of Metal Halide and other High Intensity Discharge lamps. Metal Halide and HID lamps are used for street lighting, floodlighting in stadiums and illuminating buildings. These lamps are mostly installed by civic bodies and municipalities and subjected to repeated switch-on and switch-offs, either to conserve energy or due to power failure. “This often results in the failure of the ballast, which is used to stabilise current flow in lamps and luminaries. HID lamps are expected to have a life of 20,000 hours, but with the earlier Ignitor system, used to fire the lamp, frequent switch-on and switch-offs would cause the lamp to fail within 10,000 hours. Crores of rupees are spent in early replacement of lamps and the control gear,” Mr Biswas said. Erosion of lamp electrode caused by high energy ignition pulses is the cause of the lamps early failure but with the “Dragon Kink Effect”, depreciation of illumination, rapidly with time, will be arrested and prevented. - Source 01/03/08 - Introducing Magnet-Responsive Memory Foam "The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles." - Source 01/03/08 - Death Stats The question: On the Montel Williams show, Sylvia Browne recently stated that most people die within three months of their birthdays; is this true? The answer: Though TV psychic Sylvia Browne has a long history of documented failures and misstatements, one must give credit where credit is due: Sylvia Browne is correct that most people die within three months of their birthday. / The idea that there is some sort of supernatural pattern to deaths is common in mystical thinking and many New Age beliefs. It is similar to the notion that deaths come in sets of three. Tens of thousands of people die every day from disease, accident, suicide, and murder. - Source 01/03/08 - Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" - Source 01/03/08 - Myspace Presidential Election MySpace will be holding its Online Presidential Primary Tuesday and Wednesday, January 1st and 2nd, 2008. Beginning on Tuesday, January 1 at 3:01 AM EST, MySpace will invite its community to participate in the first MySpace Presidential Primary at: http://impact.myspace.com. Taking place just prior to the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primaries, the largest online community will be the first to choose their candidate for the nation’s highest office. Polls will close Wednesday, January 2 at 11:59 PM EST. - Source 01/03/08 - Arlington's Car-Free Diet Welcome to Arlington's Car-Free Diet, the easy, fun way to see how incredible it can feel to live a car-free or car-lite lifestyle. Each time you leave your car at home - choosing instead to ride ART or Metro, bike, walk or telework - you can save money, improve your health and clean our environment. To find out exactly how much going car-free can change your life, check out our Car-Free Diet Calculator! - Source 01/03/08 - My first youtube Video Check out my first youtube video. If you get a chance, check out my first youtube video upload. The first version was 22 minutes so youtube rejected it as filesize too large, the 2nd version was 11 minutes and still a reject but the third was 8 minutes and it went through fine. The format was mpeg1 which is 352 X 240 though youtube specifies 320 X 240 It seems to have rendered ok though I need to reprocess it using Ulead for a brighter and sharper video. Excellent video provides insights into Pyramidal and Tetrahedral Geometry. How they work and how to use them for novel effects. Incredible, information packed, over 2 Hour long DVD describing many unusual and original experiments including transmutation of elements, energy extraction, increasing plant growth, healing the body and more. - Source 01/03/08 - Get $40 from Uncle Sam to watch TV If you're one of the 14.3 million households that currently gets their television via over-the-air broadcasts, you'll be without a signal come February 18, 2009. That's the date the US switches from old, boring analog to what is being called by high-ranking officials as "the new hotness" or... digital. But, you're not completely out of luck. As of yesterday, the US government is giving away 33.5 million $40 coupons to help people buy converter boxes (expected to cost between $50 and $70) so they continue to suck on the sweet electronic teat without interruption. No, don't call your doctor or wash your eyes out with bleach, you read that right: the US government is spending $1.5 billion to help people watch TV. - Source 01/01/08 - New Energy uses for Asphalt If you´ve ever blistered your bare feet on a hot road you know that asphalt absorbs the sun´s energy. A Dutch company is now siphoning heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes and offices. Solar energy collected from a 200-yard stretch of road and a small parking lot helps heat a 70-unit four-story apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn. An industrial park of some 160,000 square feet in the nearby city of Hoorn is kept warm in winter with the help of heat stored during the summer from 36,000 square feet of pavement. The runways of a Dutch air force base in the south supply heat for its hangar. And all that under normally cloudy Dutch skies, with only a few days a year of truly sweltering temperatures. The sun is the single most plentiful, reliable, accessible and inexhaustible source of renewable energy _ radiating to earth more watts in one hour than the world can use in a whole year. But today, solar power provides just 0.04 percent of global energy, held back by high production costs and low efficiency rates. A latticework of flexible pipes, held in place by a grid, is covered over by asphalt, which magnifies the sun´s thermal power. As water in the pipes is heated, it is pumped deep under the ground to natural aquifers where it maintains a fairly constant temperature of about 68 F. The heated water can be retrieved months later to keep the road surface ice-free in winter. Though it doubles the cost of construction, the system is designed to provide longer life for roads and bridges, fewer ice-induced accidents and less need to repave worn surfaces. But the same system can pump cold water from a separate subterranean reservoir to cool buildings on hot days. "We found we were gathering more energy in summer than we needed, so we asked a building contractor what we can do with the extra energy," said Lex Van Zaane, the commercial manager. The answer was to construct buildings near the tarmac and pipe hot water under the floor. The water usually isn´t hot enough on its own, and must go through an electricity-powered heat pump for an extra boost, Van Zaane said. The installation cost is about twice as much as normal gas heating, but the energy required is about half of what would otherwise be needed. That translates into lower monthly heating bills and a 50 percent savings in carbon emissions. - Source 01/01/08 - AFA researchers testing ocean waves for energy Researchers at the Air Force Academy are developing an idea that could use ocean waves to meet much of the nation’s energy needs. The devices used to extract the energy look like the paddle wheels on river steamships of old, but with some new twists added by researcher Stefan Siegel along with aeronautics research center director Thomas McLaughlin. They envision submersible barges lined with the wheels that would be able to use the movement of ocean water to generate electricity and transmit it to shore over submerged cables. Key to the invention is the idea that the blades on the paddle wheels will act like wings and can be steered to deal with different sea conditions. They would also be designed to work in pairs that spin in opposite directions to cancel out the power of the waves against the submerged barge. Scores of designs to generate electricity from ocean waves have already been tried with limited success. The main problem with moving water is it can rapidly change intensity and direction. By submerging the generating plant and allowing it to move with the waves, though, Siegel thinks he has those problems licked. The main reason ocean-based power is attractive is that 70 percent of the world’s population lives within 100 miles of a sea. “If I can use the wave power right off Los Angeles or San Francisco, I have tremendous savings in infrastructure,” Siegel said. And because moving water is so much heavier than air, its potential to generate electricity is up to 25 times greater than a wind farm of similar size, Siegel estimates. Key to turning the idea into reality will be the work of cadets using the academy’s aeronautics supercomputer to calculate how the water will flow over the paddle wheels. Minuscule changes to how the paddles are designed can make a huge difference in how much power could be extracted. - Source 01/01/08 - Old Age Rejuvenator Centrifuge of 1935 The August, 1935 issue of Science and Mechanics carried this hilarious article on the "Old Age Rejuvenator Centrifuge" -- a technology that whirled the elderly to keep them supple. "What shall the prophylaxis (prevention) and therapy (treatment) be? How can the effects of this force be mitigated? Lying down relieves the daytime direction of fatiguing pull in the case of the well or slightly ill; but something more than this is needed by the badly-damaged. We suggest periods of centrifugalization. An individual in special need of treatment might rest at night upon a large revolving disc with his head toward the outer rim; the disc should be so beveled as to carry the head at a lower level than the feet; optimum (best) speed to be determined by laboratory experimentation. Such a disc might be large enough to carry ten or twenty patients. This mechanism would facilitate the functions which during the day are inhibited by gravity. Incidentally, certain cardiac (heart) and vascular disabilities might be especially helped. The decompensated heart, with edematous (swollen) and varicose extremities, might respond well." (via boingboing.net) - Source 01/01/08 - The World's Cheapest Car Set To Launch "Ready for one-automobile-per-child (OAPC)? India's giant Tata Group is on the verge of launching the world's cheapest car. The People's Car, slated to be unveiled January 10th at a New Delhi auto show, will carry a sticker price of 100,000 rupees ($2,500), which some analysts say could revolutionize automobile costs worldwide. The Tata is a pet project of Cornell-trained architect Ratan Tata, which he helped design. The vehicle is aimed at improving driving safety by getting India's masses off their motorbikes and into cars." - Source 01/01/08 - Return of the Carnivores Meat-eaters, having already ceded the moral ground to vegetarians (no one has ever really come up with a persuasive rejoinder to the claim that a warm-blooded, pain-feeling creature’s life shouldn’t be taken for your supper), have more recently had to accept that their diet is probably the source of much of the world’s heart disease and much of its obesity. There is a generation of people (in their forties or younger) who are thinking hard and philosophically about their food and are prepared to declare: Enough! I’m a meat-eater and proud of it! Three books by authors from three backgrounds-a farmer, a chef, and a pig-slaughtering, bacon-loving descendant of butchers-are remarkably alike in their gleeful chauvinism about being carnivores. Author Fearnley-Whittingstall says, “I reckon that two pigs, two lambs and a beef steer will put meat on the table about five times a week for a family of four,” he writes, with the pride of a man who, at harvest’s end, has met the challenges he set for himself at the beginning. He urges others to do the same: “Most of the meat we eat comes from industrially farmed animals who lead miserable lives and are fed on inappropriate diets.” - Source / Lose Weight Fast, eat Meat - OBESITY rates are rising, but science has barely weighed in on the best way for people to shed fat. That state of affairs is starting to change, and doctors are getting a surprise or two. Studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that the meat- and fat-rich regimen caused faster weight loss in the short term than a conventional low-fat diet. More importantly - because many had feared that the diet, even if slimming, might unfavourably affect cholesterol levels and be bad for the heart - the low-carbohydrate regimen also seemed to improve the dieters' blood fat profiles. But Atkins, like every other diet, is no miraculous fat-melter. The longer of the two studies suggested that a low-carb regimen might be harder to maintain beyond six months, compared with a low-fat approach. By the end of the year, the low-fat dieters had caught up and lost the same - very modest - amount of heft. In addition, although on average people on low-carb diets did not experience increases in their so-called 'bad' (or LDL) cholesterol levels, about 30 per cent of them did. Even with these caveats, 'we can no longer dismiss very-low-carbohydrate diets', said Dr Walter Willett, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a written editorial accompanying the papers. To maximise the diets' healthfulness, he added, people should avoid going wild on fatty bacon and red meat, and should opt instead to eat healthy oils (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats) and get protein from fish, beans, nuts and chicken. - Source 01/01/08 - How To Lose Your Job, Thanks To The Internet "When they do go off the clock and off the corporate network, how they spend their private time should be of no concern to their employer, even if the Internet, by its nature, makes some off-the-job activities more visible to more people than was previously possible. In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one's off-hours can have career-altering consequences." - Source 01/01/08 - Taiwan University Building Cheap, Slow Solar Car Researchers at Taiwan's National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences are working on a cheap and light THREE-SEAT SOLAR-POWERED CAR optimistically predicted to go on sale to consumers next year for $25,000 each. Sadly, the commercial version of the car will top out at just 43 miles per hour, and run for three hours after being charged by "a few hours" of sunlight. So it will be a lousy car but a super golf cart. - Source 01/01/08 - Britain to go ahead with nuclear power stations The government will give the go-ahead for the new era of nuclear power despite fierce opposition from British MPs and environmentalists, leading newspaper 'The Daily Telegraph' reported here on Monday. "We will take the difficult decisions on energy security -- on nuclear power and renewables -- so British invention and innovation can claim new markets for new technologies and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs," Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quoted as saying. Greenpeace forced the government to launch a further study of the plans earlier this year after judges ruled that the initial decision-making process was flawed. Greenpeace is likely to try to halt the plans again. However, British Ministers are confident that their "wide-ranging" five-month consultation will lead to a pro-nuclear outcome, according to the daily. - Source 01/01/08 - Innovative Minds Don't Think Alike “I have a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too,” Mr. Heath says. “People who design products are experts cursed by their knowledge, and they can’t imagine what it’s like to be as ignorant as the rest of us.” IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience. - Source 01/01/08 - Pinoy-made electric cars top draw but stuck at QC Circle The eight prototypes of the “G Car” built by engineer Gerry Caroro have been attracting some 100 to 200 park goers daily since the fleet was added last Nov. 30 to the Circle’s eco-themed attractions. “My dream is for every Filipino to one day enjoy wonderful stretches of virtually pollution-free roads, with my G Cars as the principal mode of personal transport,” said Caroro, who produced the vehicles at an average cost of P280,000 ($6,787.00US) per unit from his West Avenue workshop in QC. One G Car variant runs on a 48-volt, deep cycle-type battery which Caroro can also supply. When plugged to a standard 220-volt power source, it would only consume between P40 and P60 worth of electricity to be fully recharged in about 8 hours. The car can then cover up to 80 km. “One model I am particularly promoting could seat two persons in front and two more at the back. It could go for a maximum of 40 kph so it’s just perfect for short rides around the city,” Caroro told the Inquirer. Of the eight models, one can run on both battery and gasoline (hybrids), and another on battery and solar energy (with solar panels installed on the car’s roof). But being reduced to a mere park curiosity is certainly not what the inventor had in mind after spending over a million pesos for his Earth-friendly rides. At the moment, an electric car like the G Car is still limited to private roads in the country since the Land Transportation Office has yet to draw up measures for the registration of such vehicles. The process will largely be based on certifications coming from the Department of Science and Technology concerning the technical specs of electric car models. - Source 01/01/08 - Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag. "There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater...Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later...." These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages -- in English as "Defying Hitler." I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Haffner's birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush's America...this is almost unbelievable." / EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM: -Powerful and continuing nationalism -Disdain for human rights -Identification of enemies as a unifying cause -Supremacy of the military -Rampant sexism -Controlled mass media -Obsession with national security -Religion and government intertwined -Corporate power protected -Labor power suppressed -Disdain for intellectuals and the arts -Obsession with crime and punishment -Rampant cronyism and corruption -Fraudulent elections - Source 01/01/08 - The World of Tomorrow ON Jan. 1, 1908 - New Year’s Day one century ago - The New York World greeted readers with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America. The title of the article was simply “1808 - 1908 - 2008.” The World began by marveling at how far America had come since 1808, then turned to the question of the future: “What will the year 2008 bring us? What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?” The essay’s visions were not timid. “We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,” the newspaper went on. “We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need. Who can say?” Predictions about the future were a staple of New York journalism in the early 20th century. Newspapers, including this one, frequently solicited prominent citizens for their thoughts on the future of the world, of America and, most urgent, of New York. The point of such predictions was not necessarily that they were accurate but that people cared enough about the future to bother thinking about it. With that in mind, 10 knowledgeable New Yorkers, from the Nobel laureate Paul Nurse (Simon Flexner’s successor) to a 12-year-old girl named Kate, were asked to imagine the city a century from now. Whether their visions turn out to be right or wrong, whether they are bleak or tongue-in-cheek, all are generous efforts to wonder about the lives of New Yorkers of 2108, as those New Yorkers of 1908 once wondered about ours. - Source 01/01/08 - Hoosgot Send your wished and desires out into the ether. Hoosgot (pronounced "who’s got") is a simple way to ask who’s got what you’re looking for. Just put "hoosgot" in a blog post or a Twitter tweet and it’ll show up here in Hoosgot. It’s meant to give you a place to send the requests for all of those things that you’ve wanted, but just can’t find... If someone’s got what you’re looking for, or a clue in that direction, they post a comment. RSS feeds flow from the comments... Of course, you can subscribe to hoosgot, we have RSS feeds so you can watch and participate - for hoosgot only works if you comment on the questions posed... We humbly trace our roots to the wonderful lazyweb (on LF) which, unfortunately shut down in 2006. It was a glorious experiment in what the web could produce - co-creation on a global scale... Hoosgot is run by David Sifry...founder of a few companies you may have heard of, most recently Technorati. This is a personal project in his spare time. The code is still pretty alpha... - Source 01/01/08 - New cars that are fully loaded - with debt Cindy Gerhardt has rolled over so much debt on successive vehicle purchases -- five in three years -- that she now owes almost $43,000 on two trucks worth no more than $29,000 and, she says, perhaps as little as $22,000. Faced with car payments that exceed her monthly mortgage, she tried to trade in the pair for a single vehicle. But with so much unpaid principal on the vehicle loans, the only offer she got from the dealer was to trade in one truck on yet another new vehicle -- and increase her debt by another $25,000. Americans haven't just been taking out risky mortgages for homes in the last few years; they've also been signing larger automobile loans for significantly longer terms than they used to. As a result, people are slipping into a perpetual cycle of automobile debt that experts think could lead to a new credit crunch extending from dealerships to driveways and all the way to Wall Street. - Source 01/01/08 - whatkindofWORLDdoyouwant: Tell the world and raise $ whatkindofWORLDdoyouwant.com is the first video community that gives back! We are all connected to one another through our actions. Each person has the ability to make a difference. This is one of the messages of the Five For Fighting video "World." Tell the world what kind of world you want and raise money for charity by making and uploading a video of yourself, your friends or your family--whomever and whatever--answering the question, "What Kind Of World Do You Want?" - Source Future News/Links