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11/30/08 - It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum. The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter. Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks - but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton's mass. So what accounts for the rest of it? Theory says it is created by the force that binds quarks together, called the strong nuclear force. In quantum terms, the strong force is carried by a field of virtual particles called gluons, randomly popping into existence and disappearing again. The energy of these vacuum fluctuations has to be included in the total mass of the proton and neutron. But it has taken decades to work out the actual numbers. - Source
11/30/08 - Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives? In a back room of New Scientist's offices in London, I sit down at a table with the Russian biochemist Mikhail Shchepinov. In front of us are two teaspoons and a brown glass bottle. Shchepinov opens the bottle, pours out a teaspoon of clear liquid and drinks it down. He smiles. It's my turn. I put a spoonful of the liquid in my mouth and swallow. It tastes slightly sweet, which is a surprise. I was expecting it to be exactly like water since that, in fact, is what it is - heavy water to be precise, chemical formula D2O. The D stands for deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen with an atomic mass of 2 instead of 1. Deuterium is what puts the heavy in heavy water. An ice cube made out of it would sink in normal water. My sip of heavy water is the culmination of a long journey trying to get to the bottom of a remarkable claim that Shchepinov first made around 18 months ago. He believes he has discovered an elixir of youth, a way to drink (or more likely eat) your way to a longer life. Shchepinov realised there was another way to defeat free radicals. While he was familiarising himself with research on ageing, his day job involved a well-established - if slightly obscure - bit of chemistry called the isotope effect. On Christmas day 2006, it dawned on him that putting the two together could lead to a new way of postponing the ravages of time. The basic concept of the isotope effect is that the presence of heavy isotopes in a molecule can slow down its chemical reactions. This is because heavy isotopes form stronger covalent bonds than their lighter counterparts; for example, a carbon-deuterium bond is stronger than a carbon-hydrogen bond. While the effect applies to all heavy isotopes, including carbon-13, nitrogen-15 and oxygen-18 (see chart), it is most marked with deuterium as it is proportionally so much heavier than hydrogen. Deuterated bonds can be up to 80 times stronger than those containing hydrogen. It dawned on him that if ageing is caused by free radicals trashing covalent bonds, and if those same bonds can be strengthened using the isotope effect, why not use it to make vulnerable biomolecules more resistant to attack? All you would have to do is judiciously place deuterium or carbon-13 in the bonds that are most vulnerable to attack, and chemistry should take care of the rest. Shchepinov points out that there is masses of existing science backing up his ideas. Dozens of experiments have proved that proteins, fatty acids and DNA can be helped to resist oxidative damage using the isotope effect. One recent experiment kept humans on a low-level heavy-water diet for 10 weeks, during which their heavy-water levels were raised to around 2.5 per cent of body water, with no adverse effects (Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, vol 1760, p 730). The researchers also found that some deuterium became incorporated into proteins. Heavy water, however, isn't completely safe. In mammals, toxic effects start to kick in around the 20 per cent mark, and at 35 per cent it is lethal. This is largely down to the isotope effect itself: any protein in your body has the potential to take up deuterium atoms from heavy water, and eventually this radically alters your entire biochemistry. You'd have to drink a vast amount to suffer any ill effects - my 5 millilitres did me no harm whatsoever - but even so, Retrotope is not advocating heavy water as an elixir of youth. At current prices, a litre of heavy water will set you back $300. "Isotopes are expensive," says Shchepinov. "But there's no need for them to be. Methods are there to extract them, but nobody wants them." Unless demand rises, there is no incentive to produce them in bulk, and this keeps the price high. A team at the Institute for the Biology of Ageing in Moscow recently fed various amounts of heavy water to fruit flies to see if it had any effect on longevity. Though large amounts were deadly, smaller quantities increased lifespans by up to 30 per cent. - Source
11/30/08 - Sometimes A Lack Of Radioactivity Is A Bad Thing When Ohio State glaciologists failed to find the expected radioactive signals in the latest core they drilled from a Himalayan ice field, they knew it meant trouble for their research. Those missing markers of radiation, remnants from atomic bomb tests a half-century ago, could mean a much greater threat to the half-billion or more people living downstream of that vast mountain range. The absence of radioactive signals in the top portion of these cores is a critical problem for determining the age of the ice in the cores. The signals, remnants of the 1962-63 Soviet Arctic nuclear blasts and the 1952-58 nuclear tests in the South Pacific, provide well-dated benchmarks to calibrate the core time scales. "We rely on these time markers to date the upper part of the ice cores and without them, extracting the climate history they preserve becomes more challenging," Thompson said. "We were able to get a date of approximately 1944 A.D.," Kehrwald said, "and that, coupled with the other missing signals, means that no new ice has accumulated on the surface of the glacier since 1944," nearly a decade before the atomic tests. While the loss of the radioactive horizons to calibrate the cores poses a challenge for Thompson's research, he worries more about the possibility that other high-altitude glaciers in the region, like Naimona'nyi, are no longer accumulating ice and the impact that could have on water resources for the people living in these regions. "When you think about the millions of people over there who depend on the water locked in that ice, if they don't have it available in the future, that will be a serious problem," he said. Seasonal runoff from glaciers like Naimona'nyi feeds the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers in that part of the Asian subcontinent. In some places, for some months each year, those rivers are severely depleted now, the researchers said. The absence of new ice accumulating on the glaciers will only worsen that problem. - Source
11/30/08 - Water Vapor - The Underappreciated Greenhouse Gas In Global Warming Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle. Water vapor feedback can also amplify the warming effect of other greenhouse gases, such that the warming brought about by increased carbon dioxide allows more water vapor to enter the atmosphere. Specifically, the team found that if Earth warms 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the associated increase in water vapor will trap an extra 2 Watts of energy per square meter (about 11 square feet). "That number may not sound like much, but add up all of that energy over the entire Earth surface and you find that water vapor is trapping a lot of energy," Dessler said. "We now think the water vapor feedback is extraordinarily strong, capable of doubling the warming due to carbon dioxide alone." - Source
11/30/08 - (Gy)Robot spurs recognition Greg Schroll, honored Tuesday, won a $15,000 prize for the invention, a new spherical robot with potential to drastically advance safety and technology. Schroll, 22, thinks the robot could have many potential uses, including surveillance, reconnaissance and disaster-zone assessment, especially in situations where conditions on the ground are not safe for people. His idea builds on previous designs by using two gyroscopes to create additional energy and help the robot climb hills, obstacles and stairs. The invention has the potential for receiving patent protection, according to a Colorado State University news release. - Source
11/30/08 - Oceans acidifying much faster than was thought: study The oceans are becoming more acidic, and much faster than previously thought, scientists say. The process, a possible threat to some ocean life, seems to be linked with rising levels of atmospheric gases that are blamed for global warming, according to the researchers. The study is based on 24,519 measurements of ocean acidity spanning eight years. During that time, the acidity increased more than 10 times faster than climate change models and other studies had predicted, said the universitys J. Timothy Wootton, lead author of the study. This increase will have a severe impact on marine food webs. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid. Abnormally acidic water harms certain sea animals, the authors said. Many sea creatures have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which the acid can dissolve, said the universitys Catherine Pfister, a co-author of the study. They added that the acidity could reduce the oceans ability to soak up more carbon dioxide, a process which some have hoped would mitigate climate change. - Source
11/30/08 - Zap new life into Ni-Cads Apparently you can revive dead Ni-Cad batteries by zapping them with high voltage. Some people have used welders in the past, but many of us just dont have access to one. This project shows you how to hack a disposable camera into a battery revival device. This could be very cost effective. A single regular AA battery could revive many Ni-Cads. Remember, this doesnt charge them, just makes them able to be charged again. / Actually, whats being done here, AIUI, is the burning out of the dendrites that form in NiCd batteries (and *only* NiCd batts!). Instead of a high-volt source I was taught to use a high-AMP source, like a car battery or other 12V source - anything larger than a housebrick should be big enough. One would then just momentarily (as in brushing a wire to complete the circuit for, like, a ms) complete the circuit where youd have the + of the BigBatt connected to the + if the NiCd, and the - of the BigBatt connected to the - of the NiCd. This high-amp short circuit tends to burn out the dendrites that prevent the NiCd from accepting a charge. Cautions: Beware hydrogen gas from Lead Acid (BigBatt) type batteries, esp during/after charging them. When you brush the wire to complete the circuit youll get a spark. This is part of the fun. If the NiCd begins to feel warm then stop immediately. I sometimes brush a few times, for good measure. This revival process works very well to revive a dead NiCd that wont accept a charge from its charger. After reviving charge as per normal. Wear eye protection. - Source
11/30/08 - Scientists Identify a Potentially Universal Mechanism of Aging A summary of research out of Harvard Medical School in which a set of genes known to affect aging in yeast was found to affect aging in mice as well. The genes, called sirtuins, perform two particular tasks; regulating which genes are "on" and "off," and also helping to repair damaged DNA. As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases, leaving less time for the sirtuins' regulatory tasks. The increasingly unregulated genes then become a significant factor in aging. Realizing this, the researchers "administered extra copies of the sirtuin gene [to the mice], or fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their mean lifespan by 24 to 46 percent." - Source
11/30/08 - Transformation 101 For years colleges have insisted that rapidly rising prices are unavoidable because higher education is a labor-intensive business that cannot become more efficient. A forty-minute lecture takes just as long to deliver today as it did a hundred years ago, they say; a ten-page paper takes just as long to grade. Because efficiencies in other industries are driving up the overall cost of skilled labor, colleges have to offer salaries to match, which pushes productivity down. (Economists call this "Baumol's cost disease," after the New York University economist who first made the diagnosis.) Regrettable for students, of course, but what can be done? In fact, this premise is false. Colleges are perfectly capable of becoming more efficient and productive, in the same way that countless other industries have: through technology. And increasingly, they are. One of the untold stories in higher education is that the cost of teaching is starting to decline, but virtually none of those savings are being passed along to students and parents in the form of lower prices. Instead, colleges are pocketing the difference, even as they continue to jack up tuition bills. Technology is driving down the cost of teaching undergraduates. So why are tuition bills going up? - Source
11/30/08 - Wind Farms Could Change Weather A new study suggests that massive wind farms could steer storms and alter the weather if extensive fields of turbines were built, according to a news report. It is not the first study to come to this conclusion. Massive wind farming would slow wind speeds by 5 or 6 mph as the turbines literally stole wind from the air. A ripple effect would occur in the form of waves radiating across the Northern Hemisphere that could, days later, run into storms and alter their courses by hundreds of miles. Also in 2004, David Keith of the University of Calgary and his colleagues estimated the drag from wind farms if they covered 10 percent of the Earth's land surface. They concluded that global cooling would occur in polar regions and global warming would result in temperate regions such as North America at about 30 degrees North latitude. - Source
11/30/08 - Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis "Our money represents our spirit's values," Galt said. "When the government takes our profits, it is literally robbing us of our souls. I will not apologize for my wealth to a nation of looters. We who live by the mind could've been engineers, scientists, doctors, extreme-sports enthusiasts, but there is no purer pursuit than the pursuit of money. A is A. Money begets more money, and ..." - Source
11/30/08 - Internet Access Without Electricity, Connectivity or Phone A worldwide effort to bring internet access to people across the globe, despite hurdles such as no connectivity, no phone service and no electricity. SolarNetOne is a collaborative effort spanning several continents, organizations, and technical disciplines. The goal of the effort is to develop a feasible, sustainable solution to bring the internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service and no electricity. Developed by Florida based GNUveau, the system is a solar-powered Internet hub (running Ubuntu GNU/Linux). The terminals includes access to web browsing, email, voip, office, multimedia, software development and web development tools as well as 15,000 other applications. Wifi coverage spans a 2-mile radius, with no fuel costs, no polluting emissions and a long lifespan of up to 20 years with proper maintenance. The entire system, in fact, operates on about the same amount of power as a 100-watt light bulb, GNUveau says. - Source
11/30/08 - 100 Free Essential Web Tools For Digital Artists Whether you make creative digital videos of performance art, paint with computer programs or create cool digital photo compositions, there are loads of ways that you can get free online tools to help you with your project. Here weve listed 100 tools to get you started sharing your work, converting files, editing and much more. - Source
11/30/08 - Whatever happened to the hydrogen economy? Whatever happened to the hydrogen economy? At the turn of the century it was the next big thing, promising a future of infinite clean energy and deliverance from climate change. Generate enough hydrogen, so the claim went, and we could use it to transform the entire energy infrastructure - it could supply power for cars, planes and boats, buildings and even portable gadgets, all without the need for dirty fossil fuels. Enthusiasts confidently predicted the breakthrough was just five to 10 years away. But today, despite ever-worsening news on global warming and with peak oil looming, the hydrogen economy seems as distant as ever. - Source
11/30/08 - Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition as smooth as possible. But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations. The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment. One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species. - Source
11/30/08 - Mothers kill every baby boy to prevent war The Papua New Guinea jungle has given up one of its darkest secrets - the systematic slaughter of every male baby born in two villages to prevent future tribal clashes. 'Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,' said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special 'peace and reconciliation' meeting in the mountain village of Goroka. 'It's because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,' said Mrs Luke. 'The women have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.' A resident of Agibu village, Mrs Luke said she did not know how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had happened to all males over a 10 year period - and she suggested it was still happening. - Source
11/30/08 - Condometric - be sure! The Condometric is a condom with a measuring ruler printed on the side that will accurately determine the size of the wearers penis. Currently in manufacturing, the condom will be available in four flavours (lime, cherry, banana and prophylactic rubber), both metric and imperial measurements (centimetres and inches), and in packs of 3, 6 and 12 (the party pack?). According to Curiosite, the Condometric prophylactic will be made of best quality natural rubber latex. They are fine, thin, smooth, ergonomic, with non-parallel sides, transparent, lubricated, with reservoir tip and nominal width of 54 mm (2.12 inches). The product will be sold via the internet, so spontaneity is kinda out the window. The FAQs tell us that its a single-use product and that the ink doesnt rub off (though we guess it might be fun trying). Sadly, the Condometric only measures to a penis length of 25 cm so we were unable to perform any product testing with any of Gizmag's regular writers. (25 centimeters = 9.84 inches) - Source
11/30/08 - £1,000,000 for 100% chemical free material? The Royal Society of Chemistry is today reclaiming the word chemical from the advertising and marketing industries. It has been misappropriated and maligned as synonymous with "poison". The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently defended an advert which perpetuated the myth that natural compounds are free of chemicals. The truth, as any right-minded person will say, is that everything we eat, drink, drive, play with and live in is made of chemicals - both natural and synthetic chemicals are essential for life as we know it. If, as the ASA says, the public believes materials can be "100% chemical free", the RSC will soon be inundated with examples from people wishing to claim the £1 million pound bounty announced today by the RSC. - Source
11/30/08 - Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years Unveiled today, the third annual "IBM Next Five in Five" is a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years: -- Energy saving solar technology will be built into asphalt, paint and windows -- You will have a crystal ball for your health -- You will talk to the Web . . . and the Web will talk back -- You will have your own digital shopping assistants -- Forgetting will become a distant memory. The Next Five in Five is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBMs Labs around the world that can make these innovations possible. - Source
11/27/08 - Inventors plea: Take my ideas, please Vince Fodera is trying to be heard. If you listen, hell tell you how hes trying to save the world. With magnets. And vacuums. Hell show you how you could make a fortune off his ideas and he wont ask you for a dime. He just wants you to listen. Previously, hed devoted his idle hours to musing on astrology and authoring a self-published monograph entitled, Paraquantology: The Study of Thought Energy. But then, he noticed the magnets on his refrigerator. How did they stay up there? Finally, there was something to unify everything he had been thinking about. If astrology works at all, it must be the magnetic influence of the stars, and gravity must be a form of magnetism. And then when he bought a flashlight you charge by shaking, he knew he had the solution to the worlds energy problems. The ideas propelled Fodera forward, and raced from idea to idea with the speed of a vacu-car. (A vacu-car is a so-far unbuilt gas-electric vehicle Fodera has designed that would be driven not by its wheels but rather a large vacuum mounted in the rear). Within a couple of years, not only had he designed the vacu-car, but also an underground, water-powered magnetic generator and a roof-mounted home version where water is pumped through a series of circular tubes, driving floating magnets through copper coils. While there appear to be a few potential objections to some of Foderas inventions, like the laws of thermodynamics (you dont get something for nothing, no free rides, etc., etc.), he assures me theyll work out. Of course, theyll have to be properly designed and engineered by brilliant people, he says. Hes just offering up the ideas, for anyone who wants to make them work. - Source
11/27/08 - Infrared Light Could Bring Music To The Deaf Scientists have accidentally discovered that infrared light can stimulate neurons in the inner ear like sound waves do. While trying to weld nerves with heat from a laser, surgeons found that the light could stimulate the ear nerves extremely precisely. A research team led by Claus-Peter Richter at Northwestern University in Chicago decided to explore this idea further. - Source
11/27/08 - Where's the innovation from US automakers? American ingenuity and innovation is, in fact, thriving, but you wouldn't know it as you drive past car dealerships that are stuffed with SUVs and V-8s that are the latest hangover of the spiking energy costs. And you just know that the softening of gas prices will cause carmakers to declare that happy days are here again. So, where is this ingenuity that is somehow not getting to Detroit? Locally it is in the town of Upton, where my company has been perfecting a hydraulic hybrid vehicle capable of getting more than 100 miles per gallon (city driving). A product engineer at Ford wrote a letter on the company's behalf stating emphatically: "I believe it is very likely that the Sanderson mechanism engine will enable significant efficiency and performance benefits for on-road vehicles," he wrote, adding, "With the economic and societal cost of energy and transportation fuels, funding technologies to substantially improve on-road fuel economy is critical." The project engineer for the highly successful Northstar engine that has been used in Cadillacs since 1993, who is now since retired from GM, said in a letter about our engine: "This is an exciting invention that holds the probability of improving the efficiency of future engine designs and power transfer mechanisms." You won't find the Big Three on the list of competitors, and you won't be surprised to learn that GM and Ford have largely ignored the enthusiastic endorsements of the Sanderson Engine by their own engineers and former engineers. - Source
11/27/08 - Ending The Phony War On Terror Barack Obama will confront a daunting list of priorities when he takes office on Jan. 20. Rescuing the nation's economy -- if there's anything left to rescue by then -- will obviously be at the top of the list. But it is just as important that Obama immediately declare an end to the "war on terror," and reverse all of the policies that have been carried out in its name. George W. Bush's "war on terror" has been an unmitigated disaster. First, it is unwinnable. Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic as old as humanity, and until the lion lies down with the lamb, it will continue to exist. Waging a war on terror is a category violation, like waging a war on violence. Second, it is self-defeating. By invading Iraq to preempt an alleged terrorist threat, the U.S. greatly increased that threat. And by elevating terrorist groups, which pose no existential threat to America, to the status of state actors, the Bush administration enhanced their prestige. The number of terror attacks around the world has risen greatly since Bush started his "war," and hatred of the U.S. in the Arab-Muslim world has metastasized. In a subtler way, the "war on terror" has degraded our national psyche. It encourages the U.S. to remain in a psychological state that is simultaneously fearful and aggressive -- an infantile state, one that prevents us from thinking clearly about how to address our real foreign policy challenges. - Source
11/27/08 - Ethical Killing Machines "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea." - Source
11/27/08 - Bay Area To Install Electric Vehicle Grid "Recently San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States. The Bay Area will be partnering with Better Place to create an essential electric vehicle infrastructure, marking a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuels." - Source
11/27/08 - Conservationists call for Severn 'reef' A 12-mile reef across the Severn Estuary to produce electricity could generate more power, be cheaper and be less damaging to wildlife than building a tidal barrage, conservationists claimed today. The Government is looking at the feasibility of a series of projects to harness the tidal power of the Severn, including several options which would see a barrage built across the width of the estuary. And while the Cardiff Weston barrage could generate some 17,000GW of clean energy each year, the equivalent of almost 5% of the UKs electricity needs, the report suggests a tidal reef could top that and produce 20,000GW. The study suggested a tidal reef would cost £2 billion less than the estimated £15 billion for the barrage which is itself an out-of-date estimate. - Source
11/27/08 - Call this a crisis? Just wait Staring into the abyss always focuses the mind, which can help you avoid falling in. So let's take a look at the potential catastrophe that awaits us once we survive our current crisis. At the dawn of the 21st century the U.S. had $5.7 trillion in total debt. As we approach the end of George W. Bush's presidency only eight years later, that sum has nearly doubled, thanks to war costs, tax cuts, spending increases, expanded entitlement programs, and now a welter of government bailouts and rescues. This year was particularly bad. The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2008 hit $455 billion, up from $162 billion last year. That figure does not include the cost of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which has an initial pricetag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In fairness, some of that money presumably will come back to the Treasury, since the new rescue-related sums will be used to acquire preferred stock, mortgages, and other assets that someday could be sold at a profit. Yet any such calculations are penny ante compared with the fiscal disaster that is bearing down on America. Actually, don't wait, because we've got to stop a bigger economic disaster in the making: 78 million baby-boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The entitlements due from Social Security and Medicare present us with that frightening abyss. The costs of these current programs, along with other health-care costs, could bankrupt our country. The abyss offers no assets, troubled or otherwise, to help us cross it. - Source
11/27/08 - General Motors Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system? First let them remake what they destroyed. GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda. GM met the rise of the hybrids with "light trucks." GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all. GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth. For this alone, GM's managers should never be allowed to make another car, let alone take our tax money to stay in business. But there is also a trillion-dollar skeleton in GM's closet. - Source
11/27/08 - Down on the farm, a frenzy over free food Want one more palpable sign of a desperate economy? An estimated 40,000 people came to a Weld County farm Saturday to collect free potatoes, carrots and leeks. Cars snaked around cornfields and parallel parked along Colorado 66 and 119 early in the morning to get free food from the Miller family, who farm 600 acres outside of Platteville, about 37 miles north of Denver. As this prolonged Indian summer continued, the Millers had decided to give away produce because so much was left over at the end of their annual fall festival. Any day now, a few deep freezes would kill it off. They expected between 5,000 and 10,000 people spread out over a couple of days. Instead, they found themselves on Saturday morning inundated with cars and people with sacks and wagons and barrels ready to harvest whatever was available. The Millers canceled the second day of the giveaway originally planned for today because, as Chris Miller put it, "the pickins' are very slim now." - Source
11/27/08 - Makers of 'Whizzinator' drug-cheat tool (sic) plead guilty Two men who sold fake penises enabling drug cheats to give clean urine samples have pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Gerald Wills and Robert Catalano, the president and vice president of Puck Technology, entered guilty pleas on Monday at a federal court in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were charged last month with selling the Whizzinator penis (on LF) - a lifelike device used to emit clean, realistically warm urine instead of the user's true urine... Wills, 65, and Catalano, 62, both from California, face sentencing on February 20 for conspiring to defraud the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which administers federal workplace drug testing programs... - Source
11/27/08 - The Great Birth Certificate Scandal Cover-Up of 2008 This week, newscasters reported that al Qaedas #2 terrorist disparaged the election of Barack Obama, and hurled racial slurs at Obama himself. The report has not been confirmed by the State Department, they all said, but they reported it anyway. Last week, Fox News reporter Carl Cameron told viewers that three anonymous insiders of Sen. McCains campaign said that Sarah Palin was, in essence, a diva and a dunce. He and dozens of others who picked up the story on other channels never identified, or even verified, the sources of the quotes, but they reported them anyway. Contrast these shabby examples of journalism with the legions of identifiable, verifiable and credible sources who for months have been investigating the disturbing allegation that Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he has failed to meet one of the three requirements that the U.S. Constitution mandates, specifically that he provide proof of his natural born U.S. citizenship. What follows is a partial list of people and organizations that have challenged Obamas eligibility. Further on I will comment on how egregious the medias failure to cover this story has been. And last, I will speculate on the reason for the cover-up of this full-blown scandal... Ive written several books, not one of them fictional. And thousands of articles, not one of them based on sinister suspicions or conspiracy theories. But the case of the U.S. medias complete non-coverage of this major story has gotten me to speculate on what or who may be behind this phenomenon. What force could be so powerful as to silence our countrys putative guardians of free speech the titans of the Fourth Estate? Perhaps the mystery goes back to 2004, when President Bush won his second term in office and in his first press conference in the White House said that he had "earned political capital and intended to spend it." Then suddenly and inexplicably he went into a year-long hibernation. He rarely appeared in public and gave no major speeches. Finally he reemerged albeit weakly in late November or early December of 2005. Could it be that shortly after the presidents reelection, he and major government officials received highly credible evidence from Americas ruthless Islamist enemies that they had a number of devastating (probably nuclear suitcase) weapons set up and ready to be activated in as many as six-to-10 of our major cities unless he (the president) tacked left and played nice for the following two years? Was America taken hostage? The president, one could speculate, had only two choices: (1) play chicken and possibly sacrifice the lives of millions of Americans and the destruction of major American cities, or (2) opt for the lesser of two evils, the second being to pave the way for a dangerous Trojan Horse qualified or not to capture the White House. - Source
11/27/08 - Icelanders demand PM resign during violent protests Thousands of Icelanders demonstrated in Reykjavik on Saturday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank Governor David Oddsson for failing to stop a financial meltdown in the country. It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since the financial meltdown that crippled the island's economy. "I've just had enough of this whole thing," said Gudrun Jonsdottir, a 36-year-old office worker. "I don't trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the political parties, and I don't trust the IMF. We had a good country here and they've ruined it." - Source
11/27/08 - RUSSIAN ANALYST PREDICTS DECLINE AND BREAKUP OF USA A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts. Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse." Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles." He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions." He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong. He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare. - Source
11/27/08 - Economic crisis may trigger another energy revolution Vasily Koltashev, the director of the Center for Economic Research of the Globalization and Social Movement Institute, said that the world was about to experience the energy revolution when a new method to generate energy was going to be discovered to replace hydrocarbons. A similar revolution already occurred in the 20th century, when the world turned down steam engines. Vasily Koltashev believes that there is nothing impossible in a new energy revolution. Mankind successfully extricated from the crisis of 1899-1904, when the revolution became possible owing to electric power, petrol and diesel-powered engines. It is not clear yet, what kind of energy revolution exactly the current crisis may trigger. The expert does not exclude an opportunity for nuclear power at this point. It is not ruled out that scientists will find a way out with the help of atmospheric electricity. A miracle will happen before our very eyes, the expert believes. - Source
11/27/08 - Rocks evolve too A landmark scientific study co-authored by a Canadian geologist has identified a sudden explosion of mineral diversity after the emergence of life on Earth, and advanced a "revolutionary" theory that rocks have been evolving - much like plants and animals - throughout the planet's history. Wouter Bleeker, an Ottawa-based researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada, is one of eight members of an international team whose theory of "mineral evolution" - the idea that many of the Earth's rocks are dynamic "species" which emerged and transformed over time, largely in concert with living things - is generating a major buzz in the global scientific community since its publication last week in a U.S. journal. The research team, led by U.S. geologists Robert Hazen and Dominic Papineau of the Washington, D.C.-based Carnegie Institution, recounted how just 12 minerals are believed to have been present among the dust particles swirling through space at the dawn of planetary formation some five billion years ago. As the materials that formed Earth "clumped" together and were subject to thermal pressures and other forces, the number of distinct minerals increased to about 250, the study says. Then, due to volcanic activity, plate tectonics and other processes that churned the surface of the planet before life emerged, the population of mineral "species" had grown to about 1,500 by four billion years ago. That's when changes to ocean chemistry and atmospheric conditions, coupled with the emergence of life, sparked an unprecedented diversification of the world's minerals. Among the best known examples of how living things transform the Earth's rock layers is limestone, which is accumulated from the dissolved shells of tiny marine creatures. But the new study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the multitude of rock-life interactions and documents how mineral evolution unfolded rapidly as life took hold early in the planet's history. "Biochemical processes may thus be responsible, either directly or indirectly, for most of the Earth's 4,300 known mineral species," the study states."Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution-minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms," said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. "But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. - Source
11/24/08 - Record Oral History this Thanksgiving This Thanksgiving, StoryCorps asks you to start a new holiday traditionset aside one hour on Friday, November 28th, to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or a familiar face from the neighborhood. Daily culture in the United States has moved strongly away from oral traditions, StoryCorps is seeking to change that. Check out their web site for a guide on conducting interviews for the National Day of Listening. If you're using video to record your interview, check out 8 ways to shoot digital video like a pro. If you're using a computer to record the interview, check out WavePad. - Source
11/24/08 - The Black Hole - Video Not at ALL what you'd think....reminds me of some old cartoon episodes. - Source
11/24/08 - New technology charges hybrid batteries during driving U.S.-based Electric Truck LLC has optioned exclusive commercial rights to a technology developed by Tufts University in Boston that can recharge the batteries of any hybrid-electric or electric-powered vehicle while it is being driven. The technology could increase the miles per gallon or total driving range performance of hybrid or electric cars by 20 to 70 per cent, the company said. The cost-effective invention harnesses the vehicles movement to generate electricity, which is used to continually recharge the battery while the vehicle is in motion. Since the technology uses the vehicles weight for energy recovery, the company said it could help speed the expansion of the hybrid and battery electric vehicle market to vehicles of greater size, weight and payload, including SUVs, pickup and delivery trucks, mail trucks, school and city buses, and other light- and medium-duty trucks. These vehicles represent a large market segment based on commercial need, as well as some of the largest sources of emissions. - Source
11/24/08 - Machine Condenses Drinking Water Out of Thin Air "A new $1,200 machine that uses the same amount of power as three light bulbs promises to condense drinkable water out of the air. On display at Wired Magazine's annual tech showcase, the WaterMill 'looks like a giant golf ball that has been chopped in half: it is about 3ft in diameter, made of white plastic, and is attached to the wall. It works by drawing air through filters to remove dust and particles, then cooling it to just below the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed water is passed through a self-sterilising chamber that uses microbe-busting UV light to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires' disease or other infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a pipe to the owner's fridge or kitchen tap.'" / The WaterMill provides you with: * clean, fresh water for drinking and cooking * up to 12 liters of water per day * a sustainable, elegant appliance for your home. - Source
11/24/08 - The solution to energy security: Work America needs to enact a National Economic and Energy Security (NEES) work program. This would be an opportunity for the government to partner with business to create jobs, upgrade our infrastructure, move quickly toward energy independence, and grow the economy in all sectors. Three stages to the proposed NEES work program would help manufacturing companies and create jobs. Stage 1: Energy Development: The proposed NEES would require financing through bonds and offshore oil drilling proceeds. With cooperation from oil companies, some profits will go to the government to continue the work program, pay for infrastructure upgrades and alternative energy development. Partnering with auto manufacturers to retool and use facilities that are closed or closing and hire labor to manufacture what's necessary for the exploration and drilling of offshore oil and natural gas should begin immediately. During World War II, the manufacturing time of Liberty Ships was cut from 230 to 42 days. This was possible because dedicated workers focused on a specific and vital need. Similar productivity with oil drilling would bring the time from 10 years to less than two years. There are plenty of factories that are currently idle or threatened with closure. Factories can be retooled as in WWII when auto manufacturers adjusted their assembly lines to produce tanks and planes for the war effort. This would be an excellent way to get people working quickly for a common goal -- energy independence. As oil income becomes available, building wind turbines, nuclear facilities, solar power, and other energy sources will begin. Once America is energy independent, the wells could be capped and made part of the strategic petroleum reserve, increasing it exponentially from its current levels, or pumping could continue with government proceeds to pay down any debt so future generations are not burdened. Stage 2: Infrastructure Upgrades: Bridges, tunnels, highways and railway systems were state of the art at their inception, but are worn out for what is needed in the future. America is beginning to see cars using alternative energy: electric, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and hydrogen. The government needs to take the lead to help create the infrastructure needed to power these new vehicles across the country. Government can provide assistance in refitting current gas stations with LNG and hydrogen pumping capabilities. Additionally, the United States, once the leader in train technology, needs to construct maglev trains across the country. Creating fast, efficient, and clean alternative travel and freight delivery options is critical to continued economic development. Stage 3: Innovation: Increasing battery life for cars to allow them to drive further distances between charges is critical. New sources for bio-fuel need to be explored. Developing more energy efficient products and becoming more energy efficient citizens is essential. - Source
11/24/08 - Electricity from Waste Heat Ener-G-Rotors' system harvests energy at lower temperatures. Factories, data centers, power plants--even your clothes dryer--throw off waste heat that could be a useful source of energy. But most existing heat-harvesting technologies are efficient only at temperatures above 150 °C, and much waste heat just isn't that hot. Now Ener-G-Rotors, based in Schenectady, NY, is developing technology that can use heat between 65 and 150 °C. The company replaces the turbine in a typical electrical generator with a device called a gerotor, which it claims to have made "near frictionless." Instead of turning a turbine, the expanding vapor in Ener-G-Rotors' system turns the gerotor, which is really two concentric rotors. The inner rotor attaches to an axle, and the outer rotor is a kind of collar around it. The rotors have mismatched gear teeth, and when vapor passing between them forces them apart, the gears mesh, turning the rotor. Reducing the friction means that the rotor turns more easily, so the gas doesn't need to exert as much force to generate electricity. That's why the system can work at lower temperatures, which impart less energy to the gas. The company expects to convert 10 to 15 percent of low-temperature waste heat into electricity, delivering a payback in two years or less in most cases, says CEO Michael Newell. - Source
11/24/08 - Alberta leads the charge toward solar energy innovation Canmore, Alberta uses the sun to make ice for its arena, which is just one of the municipalitys solar-powered projects. Hot water makes better ice and the hotter the better. So, Canmore installed a solar system to heat more than 500 litres of water needed by the Zamboni each time it cleans the ice. The system works very simply. When the sun is shining, even in the dead of winter, there is more than enough energy to heat a glycol mixture pumped to solar panels on the roof. The glycol then passes through a heat exchanger to heat the water and this is stored in large, insulated tanks. The solar hot water that the Zamboni uses will save 140 tonnes of GHG emissions over 20 years compared to using a natural gas boiler. - Source
11/24/08 - Why China May Save The Electric Car GM sees China as being among the first markets and production sites for alternative propulsion systems and will continue working to advance its strategy of "in China, with China, for China" to help the country develop diverse automotive energy solutions and commercialize such energy solutions, David S. Chen, vice president of GM China Group, said last week. Recession or no recession, Asia's emerging economies will be buying a massive number of automobiles in coming decades. Odds are, the lion's share of them will run at least partially on electricity. At least that's what investors and manufacturers, from GM to Warren Buffett, think. In 2006, China had about 160 million motor vehicles. By 2050, it will have nearly 700 million, or almost three times the number of registered vehicles currently in the U.S. n early 2007, China launched the so-called "863 Initiative," which initiated multiple electric vehicle research and development projects by universities, research institutes and companies. In August, China said it would begin developing a large-scale demonstration project in 10 or more cities to put at least 1,000 hybrid, fuel-cell and all-electric vehicles on the road in each of those cities and provide the necessary infrastructure for the project. - Source
11/24/08 - Financial Collapse, Systemic Crisis? The current capitalist system is dominated by a handful of oligopolies that control the basic decisions making of the world economy. These oligopolies are not solely financial; such as the banks or the insurance companies, but include enterprises involved in industrial production, services, transports and the like. The major caracter of this systemic crisis is related to the natural resources of the planet, now less abundant than half a century ago. The North-South conflict constitutes for that reason the central axis of coming struggles and conflicts. The production and consumption-waste system at the moment forbids the access to the world natural resources for the majority of the planet, i.e. the peoples of the South. Previously, an emergent country could take its share of these resources without questioning the privileges of the affluent countries. But today, it is no more the case. The population of opulent countries -15% of the planets population- has to monopolize for its own consumption and waste 85% of the world resources, and cannot tolerate that newcomers may reach these resources, since they would provoke shortages for rich peoples standard of living. If the USA has formulated an objective of military control of the planet, it is because, without it, they cannot secure the exclusive access to these resources. As we know: China, India and the South as a whole need them as well for their development. For the USA, they must limit the access and ultimately, there is only one mean: war. On the other hand, to preserve energy sources of fossil origin, USA, Europe and others develop production of bio-fuel projects to a large scale, to the detriment of food production, still accusing the rise of prices. - Source
11/24/08 - Global Energy Transition Plan A myriad of players in the paper oil' market, from the now mostly bankrupt or part-nationalized big private banks eg. Lehman Bros, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, to the smaller players notably including the hedge funds, can each day talk down' and talk up' oil prices. The key slogan is :« if its traded it has to exist ». Anchoring this childish belief in the minds of consumers is very important to those who have no plan, model, programme or solution for the coming global reduction in oil and natural gas supplies, after their respective peak supply levels are attained. Supply and demand will always and finally balance out. A former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, J. Attali, likes to provide a so-called analogy of declining whale oil supplies at the end of the 19th C, which led to street lighting problems in European and US cities. His claim is that exhaustion of cheap whale oil supplies « caused the invention of electric street lighting », using abundant coal, oil and gas to substitute declining whale oil. Denying the possibility of oil or gas shortage is now a powerful cottage industry with its own gurus, regularly wheeled into TV studios to perorate, but the most down-to-earth reason for denial is simple: the inability or refusal to face facts. Ironically perhaps, or even antinomically, public opinions in the most oil-intense and gas-intense societies, called postindustrial' but consuming every imaginable type of industrial product, are now supposedly very concerned about climate change. - Source
11/24/08 - G.M.s Latest Great Green Hope Is a Tall Order G.M. says the Chevrolet Volt will be able to travel 40 miles on a charge, but a gas engine could extend its range to 640 miles. The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid, will not arrive in showrooms until late 2010. But it is already straining under the weight of an entire company. Executives at General Motors, the largest and apparently the most imperiled of the three American car companies, are using the Volt as the centerpiece of their case to a skeptical Congress that their business plan for a turnaround is strong, and that a federal bailout would be a good investment in G.M.s future. G.M. says the car, which is scheduled to arrive in showrooms two years from now, will be able to travel 40 miles on a charge, but it will also have a small gas engine to extend the range to as much as 640 miles using both the battery and gasoline (the 1.4 liter, four-cylinder engine is intended to run a generator that will power the car and recharge the batteries once they are depleted). It is expected to cost about $40,000. - Source
11/24/08 - Creating money out of thin air Q: Can money be created out of thin air? -- A: Yes, that is the most efficient way to make money. In Fact -- it is the only way to create money. That money-creation system is probably the greatest invention ever made -- it leads to the efficient creation of wealth of all kinds -- including manufactured and agricultural products. a) When a bank makes a loan to a customer, the bank immediately records that loan as an asset on the bank's books. b) That "asset" immediately increases the amount of "reserves" on the bank's books. c) Therefor it can be truthfully said that "all loans create their own reserves". d) That logically leads to the conclusion that banks can lend out an infinite amount of money. e) We hesitate putting that (d) conclusion here because most people can't accept that as being true -- because we all "know" that there can't be an "infinite amount of money". The statement boggles the minds of most of us and we are unable to rationally consider any further discussion of the subject. f) The problem is that the word "reserve" is a rhetorical trap when used in this context. g) Here is a common definition of "reserve" when used as a verb, from my computer's dictionary -- "refrain from using or disposing of (something); retain for future use : roll out half the dough and reserve the other half". That "other half" is usually called a "reserve" -- the noun form of the word. h) If such a definition is applied to a loan from a bank, it would be logical to assume the bank has a certain amount of money and it is lending the customer some of that money -- keeping some in "reserve". i) But that is not what actually happens. In reality, when a bank makes a loan -- it truly creates that money on the spot. In other words "it creates the money out of thin air". Those 8 words are not swallowed easily. There is something inside us that will not accept anything being made out of "thin air". But, in realty, every abstract thing is always made out of thin air. Love, dreams, beauty, joy, a joke, a story and the law are all parts of the theoretically infinite abstract world that is, figuratively, "made out of thin air". We know this is a little mind boggling. Because of the laws of physics, we all tend to think you can't make something from nothing, therefore, you can't "make money out of thin air". But that thinking is fallacious. In fact, laws of physics teach that Matter and Energy can neither be created nor destroyed -- but they can be made to change form. Fractional reserve banking essentially allows money to change form. A farmer can turn money into turnips and back again to more money if that farmer uses borrowed money to buy seed and grow turnips that he sells for more money than he borrowed. Doesn't that make sense? - Source
11/24/08 - Depression 2009: What would it look like? Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like. Open a history book and the images will be familiar: mobs at banks and lines at soup kitchens, stockbrokers in suits selling apples on the street, families piled with all their belongings into jalopies. Families scrimp on coffee and flour and sugar, rinsing off tinfoil to reuse it and re-mending their pants and dresses. A desperate government mobilizes legions of the unemployed to build bridges and airports, to blaze trails in national forests, to put on traveling plays and paint social-realist murals. Unlike the 1930s, when food and clothing were far more expensive, today we spend much of our money on healthcare, child care, and education, and we'd see uncomfortable changes in those parts of our lives. The lines wouldn't be outside soup kitchens but at emergency rooms, and rather than itinerant farmers we could see waves of laid-off office workers leaving homes to foreclosure and heading for areas of the country where there's more work - or just a relative with a free room over the garage. Already hollowed-out manufacturing cities could be all but deserted, and suburban neighborhoods left checkerboarded, with abandoned houses next to overcrowded ones. Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation's unemployed sit at home filling their days with the cheapest form of distraction available. The migrations kicked off by a depression wouldn't be in one direction, but a tangle of demographic crosscurrents: young families moving back to their hometowns to live with the grandparents when they can no longer afford to live on their own, parents moving in with their adult children when their postretirement fixed incomes can no longer support them. - Source
11/24/08 - What Would You Do in the Worst Case? These are the economic times that try mens souls, and womens too. In the past few months, a lot of people have seen their net worth fall substantially, and Im sure more than a few have contemplated what would happen if they lost everything. So we asked a group of people Nick Mills, Josh Piven, Adam Shepard, Will Wilkinson, and Ann Wroe to consider the following scenario: Imagine you just lost all your possessions and money, and you were suddenly living in the streets. 1. Whats the first move you would make? 2. Whats the first organization you would turn to? 3. What would your extended plan look like? Here are their answers. I have to admit, Ive thought about this scenario myself many times in my life and my answers bear scant resemblance to those given below. I will not go into detail because I dont want to pollute your reading experience; part of the fun of these quorums is to throw a question out there and be surprised by the answers. - Source
11/24/08 - Obama might get rid of daylight saving time Turns out, according to two academics on the NYT Op-Ed page, there is little scientific proof that this reduces energy consumption. It also turns out that this practice could be wasteful, a bit annoying, and a lot of people, including Obama, want to get rid of it. A study in Indiana, a state that recently started DST, showed an overall increase of 1 percent in residential electricity use with occasional increases of 2 to 4 percent in late spring and early fall. So much for conserving energy. - Source
11/24/08 - 'Fish technology' draws renewable energy from slow water currents A University of Michigan engineer has made a machine that works like a fish to turn potentially destructive vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power. VIVACE is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2 miles per hour.) Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It doesn't depend on waves, tides, turbines or dams. It's a unique hydrokinetic energy system that relies on "vortex induced vibrations." Vortex induced vibrations are undulations that a rounded or cylinder-shaped object makes in a flow of fluid, which can be air or water. The presence of the object puts kinks in the current's speed as it skims by. This causes eddies, or vortices, to form in a pattern on opposite sides of the object. The vortices push and pull the object up and down or left and right, perpendicular to the current. This generation of Bernitsas' machine looks nothing like a fish, though he says future versions will have the equivalent of a tail and surface roughness a kin to scales. The working prototype in his lab is just one sleek cylinder attached to springs. The cylinder hangs horizontally across the flow of water in a tractor-trailer-sized tank in his marine renewable energy laboratory. The water in the tank flows at 1.5 knots. Here's how VIVACE works: The very presence of the cylinder in the current causes alternating vortices to form above and below the cylinder. The vortices push and pull the passive cylinder up and down on its springs, creating mechanical energy. Then, the machine converts the mechanical energy into electricity. Just a few cylinders might be enough to power an anchored ship, or a lighthouse, Bernitsas says. These cylinders could be stacked in a short ladder. The professor estimates that array of VIVACE converters the size of a running track and about two stories high could power about 100,000 houses. Such an array could rest on a river bed or it could dangle, suspended in the water. But it would all be under the surface. - Source
11/24/08 - Chips to be implanted on all Israeli citizens? The claim relating to the article stated RFID Chips are to be implanted on all Israeli citizens. This is not an accurate translation from the original post at http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/810/881.html The original article in Hebrew states the technology is available to implant RFID chips but it DOES NOT SAY as is being claimed that The Israeli government is passing (or has passed) a law where all citizens will be required to have RFID chips implanted into their hand. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: Rev 13:16 The article does state however that The technology of Frequency Identifier RFID-Radio is existent and could be used to track people by putting it on their clothes, in food or under the skin as is used now on dogs. This technology is widely used to track animals and commercial goods and might in the future be installed in IDs and passports alongside biometrical identifications such as fingerprints. Crime suspects could be tagged without their knowledge. Even so, there are forces at work behind the coming world government who all tend in that direction, and at an alarming rate. All throughout history there has been an elite seeking world domination by creating a crisis to stir up fear before presenting their solution to that crisis! - Source
11/24/08 - Solar panels on graves give power to Spanish town A new kind of silent hero has joined the fight against climate change. Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy. The gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery. Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy program. - Source
11/24/08 - The Watertube Commute - Excellent Video! For those of you who think you have a tough time commuting to work, this short video will make you forever jealous. But the best part is getting a glimpse of how they made this video. - Source
11/24/08 - Scientists are a step closer to creating 'elixir of life' Experiments show that an enzyme called telomerase could be the key ingredient in an 'elixir of life'. Mice engineered to have extra-high levels of telomerase were bred with cancer-resistant creature with astonishing results. The pups, bred by Spain's National Cancer Institute, lived up to 50 per cent longer the normal. They also had less fat, had better co-ordination and were better at processing sugar, this week's New Scientist reports. Researcher Maria Blasco said: 'You can delay the ageing of mice and increase their lifespan.' She said she was optimistic the approach could one day be used to allow people to live longer, because the enzyme was capable of turning 'a normal, mortal cell into an immortal cell'. However, some safety concerns remain, because cancer cells produce telomerase at higher than normal rates. 'With anything that boosts telomerase, you may have unwanted cell growth like in cancers,' immunologist Arne Akbar from University College, London said. But Dr Blasco said cancer drugs could be used to offset the negative affects. - Source
11/24/08 - So why does a NASA tool bag cost $100,000? The simple answer, according to NASA, is that space tools need to survive the intense rigors of space -- even items that like a grease gun that run about $25 if you order it from Sears. The issue came up this week after NASA astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper lost a tool bag worth an estimated $100,000 on Tuesday during her attempt to fix a damaged space station rotary joint. The bag -- filled with scrappers, grease guns and wipes -- floated away while she was distracted trying to handle grease from an "exploded" gun. "No, it doesn't include the cost to get it to space. Some of the equipment is 'off the shelf,' but some of it is specialized hardware that had to be fabricated, qualified for the tasks and certified for use in the vacuum of space, where temperatures swing between 200 degrees F and minus 200 degrees F," wrote NASA spokesman Mike Curie. - Source
11/24/08 - Better Business Bureau takes aim at popcorn-popping viral marketers You might think the Better Business Bureau would have better business to attend to than trying to protect gullible Internet video watchers from the most preposterous fakeries perpetrated by viral marketers. You'd be wrong. You might also believe that four ringing cell phones can emit enough heat and/or radiation to pop popcorn, in which case you'll be heartened to learn that the BBB has your sorry back. The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus said in a press release (.pdf) yesterday: Advertising claims made in the context of viral videos produced to build interest in a product are subject to the same standards of truth and accuracy as advertisements published in traditional media. NAD examined a video clip disseminated by Cardo Systems, the manufacturer of wireless Bluetooth head-sets, as part of a viral marketing campaign. The video, which appeared on the YouTube Web site, depicts individuals using their cell phones to pop popcorn kernels in close proximity. NAD had requested that the advertiser address certain potential concerns including the possibility that the video clip communicated implied claims about the level of heat and/or radiation emitted by cell phones and the need to use headsets. - Source
11/21/08 - My Plan for Fixing the Country The goal: To create Innovation Nation. The country suffers from invention deficit disorder. We have become a people whose core competency is consumption rather than creation. So my prescription is to launch an initiative to create Innovation nation. / Democracy: Form a government/citizen partnership to come up with ideas for solving problems and backing legislation. The model is Obamas election campaign, and the means is the Internet. / Social Problems: Government, businesses, non-profits, and philanthropies should identify 3-4 top priorities and work together to come up with innovation solutions tapping all of their skills and resources. / Technology Competitiveness: Launch a national innovation initiative with all of the energy and determination of the space program in the 1960s. Government should fund the highest-risk, longest-timeframe research. Groups of corporations should team with universities to create virtual corporate research programs, sharing the results as platforms for individual corporate R&D. / Collaboration: Government, corporations, universities, and non-profits should take the Web 2.0 tools and apply them to cross-boundary collaborations to improve understanding, share solutions, and build new global institutions that can be effective where outfits like the UN have not. / Education: Instead of teaching by by rote and cramming for standardized tests, schools should teach competencies through programs that address the realities of students lives and allow them to express themselves, collaborate, and solve problems. Young people should be encouraged to be inventors and entrepreneurs, not consumers. - Source
11/21/08 - Hybrid Battery Company to Seek Billions From Energy Department The stumbling block for the plug-in hybrid, a vehicle designed to travel its first 40 miles or so every day on battery power, and the rest on gasoline, is the battery particularly its durability. For a long life, batteries typically need to be charged and discharged slowly, but electric cars make high demands on the battery and not only when accelerating from a stop. They also use regenerative braking, where the drive motor is reversed, turning momentum back into current when the driver wants to slow down. So in both acceleration and deceleration, the current flow can be so large it causes internal heating in the battery, shortening its life. AFS Trinity Power, a small company in Bellevue, Wash., says it has the problem licked. In January, the company rolled out a small S.U.V. that uses lithium-ion batteries nursed along by common electrical storage devices called capacitors. Capacitors take a trickle of energy and store it up so it can be released in great bursts. They can also take a huge slug of energy quickly, and then deliver it slowly. This is at the heart of AFS Trinitys innovation. Electrically speaking, the capacitors, which look like an 18-pack of shrink-wrapped Red Bull cans, sit between the batteries and the wheels, so the flow into or out of the batteries is always fairly gentle, even if the car is making jackrabbit starts or panic stops. Together, they store very little energy less than one kilowatt-hour, a tiny fraction of what the lithium-ion batteries do but they can charge and discharge almost instantly, almost forever, without damaging themselves, said Edward W. Furia, chief executive of AFS Trinity. AFS Trinity announced on Monday that it had put the electric system through a ten-month test in which it was charged from a wall socket and then discharged in a pattern typical of a 40-mile drive, including accelerations and regenerative braking. The testing, carried out by an independent lab, Mobile Power Solutions, of Beaverton, Ore., found that the buffered batteries lasted through 3,800 cycles, which would be more than 12 years for a car charged six times a week. Unbuffered, the batteries lasted only 500 cycles equivalent to less than two years. Of course, most cars do not go 40 miles on most days, so gasoline use would often be zero. On Tuesday, the AFS Trinity said it plans to apply for a $2.5 billion loan from the Energy Department, under the $25 billion loan program created as part of last years energy bill. - Source
11/21/08 - A green car push from abroad A German solar energy company wants to buy General Motors' Opel unit for $1.25 billion. GM says Opel isn't for sale, but Sam Eaton reports it may just be a matter of time before innovation is delivered from the outside. - Source
11/21/08 - Lettuce drink to health Forget salads. Leafy greens as beverages are the health-kick du jour. It sounds like something superheroes might drink but the "green smoothie" is gathering a growing - and, if the hype is to be believed, glowing - following. Fans of this home-blended fruit and vegetable drink say a regular dose will do everything from improve your sleep to amp up energy levels, eradicate skin conditions and basically make you feel great. Wells and his partner Runi Burton were so convinced by the power of this simple concoction that they set up a free online health initiative, The Green Smoothie Challenge (greensmoothiechallenge.com), in May. "I think the green smoothie is awesome," he says. "In one glass you can get more than half of your daily allowance of fruit and vegetables in one hit. If people do that, they are probably doubling or tripling the fruit and vegetable intake they otherwise would have had." There are many recipes but basically a green smoothie is a blend of fruit, green vegetables and water. "Vegetables, especially green, leafy vegetables, are packed with phytochemicals, which are really important for our health. They are full of enzymes and other chemicals we don't even know yet and some of them can be damaged by cooking. "So liquefying greens like this means the fruit masks the flavour of the greens and, in one hit, you are getting a life-giving burst of enzymes, phytonutrients and fibre." Breaking the greens down in a blender means they are a lot easier for the body to digest, Wells says (though not every blender is up to the task). BANANA FOR BEGINNERS - The simplest recipe is made with banana and romaine (or cos) lettuce. Bananas give the body an instant and substantial energy boost. Bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein the body converts into serotonin, which is known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier. Bananas are high in potassium and low in salt, a great combination to help reduce the risk of high blood pressure - a fact supported by the US Food and Drug Administration. The vitamin C and beta-carotene content of cos lettuce make it a heart-healthy green. Cholesterol becomes sticky when it oxidises and forms plaque on the artery walls. Working together, vitamin C and beta-carotene prevent cholesterol from oxidising. In addition, the fibre in cos lettuce binds to bile salts in the colon and allows them to be eliminated. The body responds by making more bile. As bile is responsible for breaking down cholesterol, the result is a reduction of cholesterol build-up. Ingredients - 1/2 romaine (cos) lettuce / 3 bananas / 2 cups water / Blend the bananas with water for 30 seconds. Add the romaine lettuce and blend until smooth. You can also add a few mint leaves for a fresh twist. - Source
11/21/08 - Hydrogen Hybrid Too Good To Be True? A man named Stanley Meyer claimed to drive a dune buggy across the country on 20 gallons of tap water. Meyer is the subject of numerous websites and was the focus of the 1995 BBC documentary "It Runs on Water." He had more than 20 patents based on his work with his water cell. He also was the subject of controversy, legal troubles and conspiracy theories. Meyer was sued by former investors and lost when he could not prove his invention to work. John Nordlund is not a rocket scientist, he has no advanced degrees and no formal science education. Nordlund's system uses electrodes to charge metal plates inside a water chamber made of PVC pipe. The charge separates the hydrogen and oxygen, using the hydrogen as a fuel booster to his truck. Nordlund drove a round trip of approximately 100 miles, 50 with the hydrogen system off and 50 with it on, using a scan gauge to check fuel mileage. In his 2001 Ford F-150 with a 5.7L V8 engine, Nordlund averaged roughly 10 miles per gallon driving through the city on the first leg. With the system turned on, his truck averaged 17 miles per gallon, reaching as high as 20.8 mpg. "The reason you get better fuel mileage out of hydrogen, adding hydrogen to the system, is that it increases the efficiency of the burn process in the combustion chamber," Nordlund said. "It makes gasoline burn more efficiently." Nordlund continues to test and tweak his system, trying to make it as efficient as possible. He believes if he could double the amount of hydrogen being introduced in the engine, he could see a 200 percent increase in gas mileage. Another concern is safety. Hydrogen is a flammable gas and some worry that introducing it into a combustion engine could potentially put a bomb on the highway. But Nordlund says pressurization is the key. The gas is not pressurized; it is fed into the engine as it is created, making it safe to use. "The gas will not explode because you have to have more than a four percent concentration in an enclosed area,' he said. "This system isn't any more dangerous than barbecuing." - Source
11/21/08 - Filipino inventor turns used oil to fuel Can used oil be recycled as fuel for vehicles? Yes, according to Teodorico Badua, the inventor of a so-called fuel energy saving device. This device, he says, transforms used oil and other combustible liquid waste into flammable gas that can be added to the engine fuel, which can translate to fuel savings of up to 30 percent. This La Union-based inventor says the device harnesses the energy from used oil by heating the combustible liquid waste into a gas generator. This process then generates fuel vapor that can be used for gasoline-based engines. The device has been tested to work with used cooking oil, engine oil and washing fuel, the Filipino inventor says. - Source
11/21/08 - Honeycomb tire wont go flat A new breed of tire has been developed that wont go flat, even if it gets bombed. Resilient Technologies L.L.C. has started making these decidedly cool looking tires for the military. The honeycomb of stiff but flexible plastic acts as a shock absorber just as an air filled tire would. Unlike a normal tire, it wont pop. You would have to completely destroy the tire to stop these. The article mentions that this isnt the first of its kind. Michelin has made the tweel for industrial uses... - Source
11/21/08 - Zapping Contrails With Microwave Emitters "Dissipation of contrails with a powerful microwave beam aligned behind aircraft engines is being touted as a possible solution to help address air transport's effects on the climate. 'The remote heating of condensation nuclei could be achieved by applying electromagnetic radiation, such as microwaves,' says Cranfield University's Frank Noppel. 'Depending on assumptions made, calculation shows that the power required for such a device could be as little as 0.1% of the engine power.'" - Source
11/21/08 - How to Permanently Delete Data from Your Hard Drive w/software links When it comes to data stored on your computer, deleting files doesn't actually remove the data. File information is kept in a directory so that the operating system can find it. When you delete a file, all you are doing is removing it from the directory and flagging that part of the drive as being available for new data. Until that region is overwritten, the old data can be retrieved, in fact that's how you can recover lost data. It's also the way most file recovery programs work - they look for data on your hard drive that shouldn't be there according to the directory and restore it. The only way to completely remove the data is to overwrite the contents of the hard drive. You can do this by formatting the drive, or using data wiping software that fills your hard drive with random data. - Source
11/21/08 - Free Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive and much more Windows only: Free application Eraser Portable puts previously mentioned Eraserthe popular open-source secure file deletion toolon your thumb drive for secure file deletion on the go. Like the original, Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive, optical media, files, folders, encrypted data, the Recycle Bin, and pretty much any other data you want to kill. It may not be an app you use every day, but it's a great utility to throw on your thumb drive, iPod, or other portable device for those times you do need a quick, secure delete. - Source
11/21/08 - Global climate changes could lead to violence A warmer planet could find itself more often at war. The Earth's fast-changing climate has a range of serious thinkers from military brass to geographers to diplomats predicting a spate of armed conflicts driven by the weather. Shifting temperatures lead to shifting populations, they say, and that throws together groups with long-standing rivalries and thrusts them into competition for food and water. "It's not hard to imagine violent outbursts," said Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Smith helped write one of four major studies put out in a little more than a year by centrist organizations in Europe and the United States that warn climate change threatens to spark wars in a variety of ways. Each report predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as once-bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea. They also expect violent storms to unsettle weak governments. - Source
11/21/08 - The Spending Diaries Where does it all go? Its a question that puzzles all New Yorkers. You went to the ATM two days ago and suddenly youre there again, trying to remember how it went so fast (oh, yeah, that . . . $46 you blew on vodka-and-sodas). Our spending patterns, if we think about them, tend toward the irrationalwe drop . . . $200 on jeans, then agonize over whether to take a cab or the subway home. And we wonder, How does everyone else do it? To see how money shapes our daily lives, we asked six New Yorkers of varying incomes to track every penny they spent in week; the figures provide a picture of urban life that is both heartening (even the richest among us drink deli coffee and sometimes take the subway) and somewhat less so (compare our junior professionals grilled-chicken takeout with our traders . . . $520 dinner tab at Da Umberto). And having money doesnt mean spending it lavishlyour . . . $700,000-a-year investment banker spends . . . $3,000 a year on vacations. Somehow, we all find ways to afford something that meets our definition of luxury, like our grad student who recklessly splurged on, yes, Iron Maiden tickets. Rock on. - Source
11/21/08 - Stem cells restore hearing, vision in animals Stem cells from tiny embryos can be used to restore lost hearing and vision in animals, researchers said Tuesday in what they believe is a first step toward helping people. One team repaired hearing in guinea pigs using human bone marrow stem cells, while another grew functioning eyes in tadpoles using frog cells. While there are no immediate uses for humans, they said their findings help describe some of the most basic biological processes underlying the development of hearing and sight, and may help in the development of the new field of regenerative medicine. - Source
11/21/08 - Revenge Gifts Welcome to Revenge Gifts and Happy Holidays! The holiday season is traditionally busy for Revenge-Gifts.com. My year round gifts, the allergy pillows, seasonal urns, metallic boxers and other products are designed with long term effects in mind. For Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza and whatever other pagan holiday my sick and twisted patrons may participate in (which all seem to require gifts) I break out the short-attention-span, land-fill-destined, one-shot-deal gifts. These are gifts that express how the giver truly feels about the giving season of bad lawn ornaments, annoying twinkle lights and family gatherings spawned in hell. If a gift is obligatory, allow me to assist in expressing your level of disdain for the recipient. Its what I do best. - Source
11/21/08 - BMW's Electric Car On Wednesday, BMW introduced an electric version of the Mini compact car at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The first 200 of the cars have already been delivered to the United States, well ahead of a wave of new electric cars expected from other major automakers starting in 2010. BMW was able to speed the introduction of the car by adapting an electric drive system from a small company in California to work in an existing vehicle. Other automakers are instead developing electric-car models from scratch. BMW, which acquired the Mini brand when it bought the Rover Group in 1994, plans to build an additional 300 electric cars by the end of the year, bringing the total to 500. The cars will be leased to select consumers for a year. The automaker's goal is to use the leased vehicles to gather information about real-world driving that will aid the engineering of future mass-produced electric vehicles. The technology used in the Mini is based on a drive system developed for the tzero, AC Propulsion's high-performance electric sports car, which can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 3.6 seconds. The Roadster, a car produced and sold by the startup Tesla Motors, was inspired by the tzero, and the first prototype was based on AC Propulsion's technology. Adapting the tzero's system for the Mini required only minor modifications, Gage says. The AC Propulsion design is distinctive in part because it uses a single set of hardware to both charge the battery and control the electric motor, saving space and weight. The system is also flexible. The battery can be charged at a variety of rates and voltages, from overnight charging from a standard 110-volt outlet to a 2.5-hour recharge from a special outlet that will be installed in the garages of those who lease the electric Mini. The biggest obstacle to mass production may be cost. The electric Mini will be leased for $850 a month, and the company says it already has 9,500 people signed up. Kramer says that millions of people will be willing to spend extra for an environmentally friendly--and fun-to-drive--electric car. But, he says, "it's up to BMW to take great products from AC Propulsion and figure out how to help make them affordable." - Source
11/21/08 - Ubiquity: bridging the gap between mind and machine A new tool from the company behind Firefox performs tasks based on past preferences and commands typed in plain English. A marketing manager e-mails a sales rep telling him to go to a conference in Berlin. The rep, while reading the e-mail, types in "book this". His computer looks up the flights, books the most convenient return ticket with an aisle seat, finds the nearest four-star hotel, books a room, and puts the details in his calendar. And sends his wife some flowers to apologise for missing a meal out they had arranged. This sort of web experience is not science fiction. It is just around the corner and a new experimental widget, or browser extension, called Ubiquity is pointing the way. When Ubiquity is downloaded onto a computer, the extension allows a user to call up a "command box" at the top of whatever page is on the browser. A user can then type a command, using ordinary "natural" language, into the box to perform a range of everyday internet actions. For instance, to create a map of a location, all a user has to do is type in the word "map" and the name of the location. Ubiquity will automatically find and pull up the right map, and it can easily be inserted into an e-mail or another web page. The basic problem of giving a computer credit card details and passwords so that it can book tickets automatically is an obvious difficulty. How do you ensure enough security so that criminals could not take over your Ubiquity and spend all your money? Many people would also be horrified to know that their lives can be so minutely traced through what they do on their computers. But it is all there, in one form or another, in the browsing history of every PC and laptop. Formulating rules that so that users can choose what to allow a computer to do and how to act on the information collated is something that has yet to be addressed by Mozilla's developers. - Source
11/21/08 - Billions of particles of anti-matter created in laboratory Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma "jet." In the experiment, the laser ionizes and accelerates electrons, which are driven right through the gold target. On their way, the electrons interact with the gold nuclei, which serve as a catalyst to create positrons. The electrons give off packets of pure energy, which decays into matter and anti-matter... By concentrating the energy in space and time, the laser produces positrons more rapidly and in greater density than ever before in the laboratory. Particles of anti-matter are almost immediately annihilated by contact with normal matter, and converted to pure energy (gamma rays). There is considerable speculation as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether other places are almost entirely anti-matter, and what might be possible if anti-matter could be harnessed. Normal matter and anti-matter are thought to have been in balance in the very early universe, but due to an "asymmetry" the anti-matter decayed or was annihilated, and today very little anti-matter is seen. Until they annihilate, positrons (anti-electrons) behave much like electrons (just with an opposite charge), and that's how Chen and her colleagues detected them. They took a normal electron detector (a spectrometer) and equipped it to detect particles with opposite polarity as well. - Source
11/21/08 - Mobile phone chargers are energy vampires Around two-thirds of the energy used by mobile devices is wasted in this way. "It may seem like it's a very small thing when you think of an individual charger, but given the number of chargers that are out there it has the potential of large energy savings," said Susan Smith, communications manager at Nokia. To raise awareness LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson have developed a new ratings system to show consumers how much energy chargers use in standby mode. Five stars designate the most efficient chargers, using 0.03 watt or less. Chargers that consume more than 0.5 watt get no stars. - Source
11/17/08 - Community Incinerator Turns Slum Garbage Into Cooking Heat AfriGadget takes a look at a clever garbage incinerator deployed in Kibera, Kenya, that turns waste fuel and garbage into cooking heat for residents. The design of the furnace actually allows plastics and other waste to be burnt without releasing harmful fumes: What kind of garbage? Any, plastics, food wastes even clothes - anything that will burn really! But doesnt that produce toxic fumes you ask?? This is whats so clever about the project. Using technology that I dont understand the oven burns at temperatures of up to 930 degrees F. which basically detoxifies many hazardous pollutants. - Source
11/17/08 - Piezo Injection Saves on fuel and reduces emissions up to 20% Who would have thought that a forty-five millimeter long invention could improve engine performance, reduce emissions and fuel consumption by twenty percent? During the combustion process, gasoline is directly injected into the combustion chamber near peak pressure to better utilize the fuel, resulting in a combustible mixture formed in the upper part of the combustion chamber in the immediate area of the spark plug. In this way, the innovation creates the conditions for a stratified charge. Spray-guided combustion, which is the most efficient form of stratified charge, is only possible with the performance features of Piezo technology because a precise, constant and stable injection must be directed to the immediate spark plug area. The nozzle needle completes its full stroke in just 0.2 milliseconds, while the maximum deviation between individual injected quantities of fuel is 2 percent -- even with the typically short injection pulses under driving conditions. For cleaner combustion, extremely fine atomization of the fuel must be maintained. At an injection pressure of approximately 200 bar, the average diameter of the fuel droplets is only 15 thousandths of a millimeter. Together with injector nozzles that open into the engine cylinder, an optimally prepared cloud mixture at the edge of the spark plug is yielded under nearly all operating conditions. This innovation is the only solution on the market able to do this. - Source
11/17/08 - WaterBoxx Grows Forest in the Desert A new Dutch breakthrough invention makes it possible to reforest large desert and rocky areas on the planet in the coming years. Experiments in the Sahara desert have shown that the WaterBoxx allows trees to grow under harsh conditions and can provide them with sufficient water. The WaterBoxx looks like a plastic, rectangular bucket, with a hole in the centre, allowing the tree to be planted in the soil. The sophistically designed top catches water from condensation at night. Together with the rainwater from rare showers, it is distributed in small doses to the tree inside. Additionally the WaterBoxx prevents water in the top soil layers from evaporating and protects the roots against sun, wind, weeds or rodents. After a year the tree is strong enough to grow by itself and the WaterBoxx can be removed. "Trees can grow in arid areas but are not able to germinate. The WaterBoxx gives them a head start", Hoff explains. Recently, he successfully tested his invention in de Moroccan Sahara. 90 Percent of the trees planted with a WaterBoxx were alive and green after a few months in the extreme hot summer. 90 Percent of the trees planted without the WaterBoxx died however, although they had been watered every week. "If we can reforest 2 billion hectares, the trees consume more CO2 than men produces and the whole CO2 problem will be solved." - Source
11/17/08 - From Global Recession to Greener World Through Innovative Technologies Professor Hsu presented his analysis of the cause of the current economic crisis, which attributes the subprime mortgage crisis, inflation and recession, to the rise of the crude oil price, from US$12 to US$147 per barrel in less than a decade. Conscious of the dangers of a Great Depression, Hsu, who was born in 1929, spoke of the impact of the current crisis on China, with its dependence on exports. To overcome the current crisis, and counter the threat of recession, Hsu is advising the Chinese Government to constitute a national corporation of residual oil to moderate the energy cost, and a national corporation of environmental engineering to carry out public-work programs for full employment. According to Hsu, the recent rise of the crude oil price was an artificial crisis of supply. The price rose 10 times its existing value, in less than a decade, then stumbled to less than half that, within a few weeks, during 2008. As soon as the economy began to recover, the OPEC met to cut production so as to maintain the high price. Meanwhile, in Hsu's view, the corporations in the oil industry, found no incentive to invest in new technologies to exploit residual oil, so they could create an artificial supply shortage instead, with the policy earning them excess profit. - Source
11/17/08 - Selling snow to the Swiss What costs NIS 7 million, weighs 30 tons, stands 11 meters high and is made in Israel? Once ski resorts had to pray... Hint: It's not a weapon and it doesn't save lives. Still don't know? A snowmaker, of course. Once ski resorts had to pray for snow. Says IDE's Moshe Tessel, 'Now we can guarantee them snow even without cold weather.' The new invention was discovered, quite by accident, under the blistering South African sun by a team of engineers from IDE Technologies. Originally founded in 1965 by the government to solve acute water shortage problems, the company is best known for successfully desalinating seawater and providing drinking water to Eilat. After successfully vacuum freezing seawater in the late 1960s, the company diversified and branched out into the separation, concentration and/or purification of aqueous solutions. Today, it lays claim to a long list of cutting-edge, innovative technologies and machines that are in use all over the world, including mechanical vapor compression, multi-effect distillation, vapor compression concentrators, reverse osmosis and vacuum ice machines. Fifteen years ago, IDE came up with a solution to the problem. Its vacuum ice machines put water in a vacuum under triple point conditions in which vapor, liquid and ice coexist. Part of the water evaporates, while the remaining liquid freezes. Under controlled conditions, the frozen water forms ice crystals that are lighter than water and easier to transport back to the surface. The IDE snowmaker can produce up to 1,900 cubic meters of snow per day relatively inexpensively. It doesn't require a lot of manpower thanks to a fully automated computerized system, and it just needs water. - Source
11/17/08 - After Oil, who knows? Oil production is in decline whilst consumption from emerging markets (namely, China and India) is accelerating and show signs of slowing down; experts predict that between 20 and 40 billion barrels could still be recovered in the next 40 years. After that, who knows? All that is about to change with the invention of Hyperion. Developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, like a conventional power station, it provides clean, emission-free nuclear energy, at a fraction of the cost of fossil fuels. The main benefit of Hyperion is its size: at approximately 1.5 meters across, it is literally small enough to be transported by road or by sea. Unlike its much larger cousin, the Hyperion modules are completely unobtrusive, especially so, since they are buried beneath the ground. The technology behind Hyperion ensures that it is also extremely safe. The modules include no moving parts and are delivered sealed, so there is no need for them to ever be comprised. Even if one were to be opened, the material inside would not be suitable for proliferation purposes. There is also no risk of a melt down, as the small amount of fuel inside cools down instantly. And as if that wasnt enough, the amount of waste created is minimal (about the size of a football over a five year period). With a single Hyperion module, it is potentially possible to power 25,000 average-sized homes, or the industrial equivalent for half a decade. - Source
11/17/08 - HH2 Water Fuel Cell Inventor Dr. Derek Zupancic is proud to announce the debut of the patent pending HH2 Hydrogen Generator Water Fuel Cell Clean Air Combustion System. The unique system extracts separated Hydrogen and Oxygen gases from distilled water in a large book sized device installed in a vehicle. The unit uses a little of the vehicles excess energy to produce just the right amount of Hydrogen catalyst to blend with the existing fuel source, enhancing the combustion of fuel from 30% up to 90% or more, completely incinerating fuel toxins and particulates due to the high 3000 degree burn temperature of the Hydrogen catalyst, creating clean air exhaust discharge. The gases go into the vehicle air intake system separately from each other. Vehicles can use regular fuel. The amazing system uses only water and electricity to produce the Hydrogen and Oxygen gases for pennies from water, testing on many vehicles shows greatly reduced or totally eliminated emissions, removal of engine and exhaust carbon deposits, improved torque and power, and increased fuel economy due to the complete burning of the vehicles existing fuel. Sales are allowed now worldwide. Please visit the company website at: http://www.HH2.US for more detailed information. - Source
11/17/08 - Searaser device in uphill battle for clean energy A device that harnesses the power of the sea to push water uphill has been developed to provide cheap renewable electricity. The invention is designed to pump water hundreds of feet above sea level from where it can gush downhill to drive hydroelectric generators. Pumping is made possible by the motion of waves lifting the device, Searaser, as it floats in the sea, and gravity bringing it down again in the wave troughs. A prototype has just completed tests in which it pumped water more than 160ft (50m) uphill through a pipe the diameter of a saucer. The full-size device is expected to pump water through a pipe the diameter of a dustbin lid up at least 650ft (200m) or easily enough to clear the top of Beachy Head, which is 530ft (160m) high. A series of reservoirs would be built and in some areas would be reopened at the top of coastal cliffs and hills to store water until it was needed to generate electricity. The wave pump consists of two floats, one above the other, fitted to a double-acting piston. Water is pumped as the floats are forced together and apart by the motion of the waves. Chains and weights fix the device to the sea floor and the pump is able to operate in water as shallow as 30ft (9m) as well as in extreme weather conditions. Each of the pumps has a capacity of just 0.25mw, but they are expected to be used together in their dozens, or even hundreds, side by side along the coast or further out at sea. Mr Smith, and his colleague Geoff White, calculate that one full-size device would be able to pump enough water to keep 470 homes supplied with electricity. To supply 20 million homes would take 43,000. - Source
11/17/08 - Fabricated Prophet? Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life. So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed. Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged... Prof. Kalisch, who insists he's still a Muslim, says he knew he would get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible. - Source
11/17/08 - "Heat Wheel" Could Lower Data Center Power Bills "An air conditioning technology called the 'heat wheel' is getting a test drive in data centers, and early adopters cite impressive reductions in their power bills. The heat wheel also known as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling is a refinement of cooling systems using outside air. Rather than introducing exterior air directly into the server room (the air economization we discussed recently), the heat wheel briefly mixes the outside air and exhaust air to create an air-to-air heat exchanger. A data center in the Netherlands using this approach only has to use chillers 11 days a year." - Source
11/17/08 - Brown cloud covering parts of India, China A thick layer of soot and manmade particles stretches across parts of India and China, clouding the sky in some areas, a U.N. report said Thursday. The combined effects of the atmospheric brown clouds and greenhouse gases is darkening cities such as Beijing and New Delhi and causing the Himalayas' glaciers to melt faster, the U.N. Environment Program said Thursday. The brown clouds, which are the result of burning of fossil fuels and biomass, lead to the formation of particles like black carbon and soot that absorb sunlight and heat the air. The brown clouds may be masking the warming impacts of climate change by between 20 and up to 80 percent because the clouds contain particles that reflect sunlight and cool the surface, the report said. - Source
11/17/08 - Video: Solar, Wood and Ground-source Heating Gaining in Popularity Solar thermal, ground source and wood heating systems aren't new to the market, but until the recent increases in fossil fuel prices most people weren't choosing them over oil, natural gas or electricity to heat their homes or businesses. Now, advances in technology, utility and government subsidies and high fossil fuel prices are helping to change that. Mark Weissflog, President of KW Management installs all types of small renewable energy systems including solar thermal and geothermal. He says that he has seen renewable heating evolve from being viewed as an investment to being viewed as just another way for people to buy their heat. - Source
11/17/08 - TimesMachine: 70 Years of NY Times Archives TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel. - Source
11/17/08 - Food Riots, Tax Rebellions...Welcome to the future The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012. Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week. Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts. - Source
11/17/08 - Tricked-Out Inflatable House Provides 'Instant Survival' In tough circumstances, sometimes all you need is hope, but other times you need a blow-up survival shelter featuring a bed, a couch, freeze-dried food, a 50-gallon water bladder, a first-aid kit, a radio and a cookstove. And the latter is exactly what the "Life Cube" from startup Inflatable World is designed to provide. Packaged into a four-foot-tall cube, it inflates into a 12-foot-tall structure built from the same thick plastic as a bouncy house. Designed to provide shelter and basic amenities for people in the days and weeks after a disaster, the instant housing will come with a $3,900 price tag, so the company's first market could be wealthy survivalists. - Source
11/17/08 - Energy firms 'profit from poor' Energy suppliers make some of their biggest profits from their poorest customers, a watchdog has said. Firms make about half a billion pounds a year in extra charges from prepayment meters, Consumer Focus estimates. About 1,000 prepayment meters a day are being installed in households where people have got into debt over their energy bills, it says. Industry body the Energy Retail Association says many people like the meters because they help them budget. But the industry is now under pressure from the regulator, Ofgem, to cut the prepayment tariffs. Consumer Focus says some customers are being forced to use prepayment meters. It said energy firms are using customers who pay by prepayment meter to subsidise customers who can get the cheapest deals. "Companies could be making up to £550m a year from extra charges they charge on prepayment meters," said the watchdog's Jonathan Stearn. - Source
11/17/08 - 10 Cars That Sank Detroit The global financial crisis is suffocating the Detroit automakers, but the problems at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have been festering for years - even when the mighty "Big Three" were earning billions. Aging factories, inflexible unions, arrogant executives and shoddy quality have all damaged Detroit. Now, with panicky consumers fleeing showrooms, catastrophe looms: Without a dubious federal bailout, all three automakers face the prospect of bankruptcy. There will be plenty of business-school case studies analyzing all the automakers' wrong turns. But, as they say in the industry, it all comes down to product. So here are 10 cars that help explain the demise of Detroit... - Source
11/17/08 - Plagued by fungus? Bacteria? Try copper socks Used since ancient times to make tools, weapons and plumbing systems, Chilean innovators are experimenting with ways to exploit copper's bacteria- and fungus-fighting characteristics. "Public transport systems, where germs can be transmitted and there are large numbers of people, are a potential market for applications for surface-metal copper," said Jurgen Leibbrandt, head of market development for the Chilean state copper giant Codelco. "In clothes there is another venue ... where it has excellent anti-fungus qualities," he said. Scientists say the power of copper to fight germs lies in the fact that copper ions separate on contact with bacteria and cause irreversible damage to the bacteria's cells. Codelco is already working with the private sector to market socks, towels, pillow cases and underwear sewn with copper fibresthat fight fungi and even help combat acne. One Chilean entrepreneur, Joaquin Ruiz, has invented copper sponge filters to purify water on salmon farms, eliminating disease and fungi and reducing the large amounts of costly antibiotics currently employed to do the same job. "That means huge savings. Instead of using large quantities of antibiotics and germ killing agents, with this you are just putting up a simple sanitary barrier," Ruiz, the developer of the Metal Foam sponges, told Reuters. Investigators are also looking into where they can use the metal to reduce levels of infection in hospitals. They have found the metal helps to kill Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans. "If you prevent one MRSA infection, you save $21,000, so your return on investment will be very very short, perhaps one patient," said Michael Schmidt, of the University of South Carolina medical school. "So this is going to be a fairly efficient and inexpensive solution to combat infections." Some hospitals in the United States are testing copper as a germ-resistant surface material in place of stainless steel. A British study several years ago showed that drug-resistant staph germs survived for three days on stainless steel surfaces but were not detectable on copper surfaces after 90 minutes. - Source
11/17/08 - Yes, you are a cyber criminal Yes, were talking to you. Adrian Weckler examines 12 ways that the technology you use every day could land you in hot water with the law. - Source
11/17/08 - Marine dead zones set to expand rapidly Rising levels of carbon dioxide could increase the volume of oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' in tropical oceans by as much as 50% before the end of the century with dire consequences for the health of ecosystems in some of the world's most productive fishing grounds. A CO2-rich world will only have a small impact on waters at middle and high latitudes. But in all tropical oceans the volume of 'oxygen-minimum' zones will substantially increase as ocean bacteria feed on the algae that will flourish as a result of the elevated CO2 levels. "Carbon dioxide fertilizes biological production," says Oschlies. "It's really like junk food for plants. When the carbon-fattened excess biomass sinks it gets decomposed by bacteria which first consume the oxygen, and then the nutrients." - Source
11/13/08 - Dean Kamen Develops Worlds First Stirling Hybrid Electric Car The prototype vehicle, a zippy two-seat hatchback designed with more than a passing resemblance to the Volkswagen Beetle, can go about 60 miles on a single charge of its lithium battery and with practically zero emissions. Installed in the cars trunk compartment is a Stirling engine invented at DEKA, Kamens technology company in the Manchester Millyard. It powers the features that would normally drain huge power from the battery, notably the defroster and heater. That leaves the battery primarily for propulsion. Youre running a pure electric, which is enormously cheaper to operate and enormously more environmentally friendly, Kamen explained. And if the battery does run low, the Stirling can recharge it, so youll never get stranded, he said. Thats why Kamen calls his Stirling engine an insurance policy for the electric car. He ticks off the advantages of the Stirling engine as a backup system: It can use any fuel, from biodiesel to natural gas; it burns clean; it can even be programmed to turn on so the battery and car are all warmed up by the time you get in. Kamen hopes his car could be in production within two years. He doesnt know how much it would cost, but the goal is to make it affordable for average consumers, he said. - Source
11/13/08 - Modified Rotary Engine to Run on Steam W2 Energy Inc. (PINKSHEETS: WTWO), a developer of green energy, is pleased to announce it will build a commercial unit of its rotary hydrogen engine to run on steam. The engine based on US patent number 5,720,251 is being modified to run on low pressure steam recovered from W2 Energy's biomass to liquid fuel plants. The company will also couple the engine to various generators to build a low cost solution to waste heat recovery applications. "We have developed a unique set of biomass-to-energy technologies. But one of the missing pieces has been efficient production of electricity," says Mike McLaren, CEO of W2 Energy. "Most of the small steam turbines convert approximately 30% of the heat energy into electricity. We thought we could do better. We anticipate 80-90 percent conversion efficiencies with this new turbine." W2 Energy has developed a biomass-to-energy plant which converts 4 tons per day of tires, municipal solid waste, plastics or coal into a minimum of 420 gallons per day of a blend of liquid hydrocarbons, including ultra low sulphur diesel, gasoline, naptha and industrial waxes. The first model of W2 Energy's high efficiency steam turbine will be used to power the 4 ton / day plant and to provide electricity to be sold back to the grid, from these 4 ton / day plants. The steam turbine which will mate to the 4 ton / day unit will generate 500 Kw continuous. - Source
11/13/08 - Ox-driven generators set to solve power crisis The oxen-powered generator uses a simple formula. An ox is used to rotate a vertical shaft with which an arm attached to the oxs hump revolves at 3RPM (revolutions per minute). Four back-to-back gears would multiply the revolutions beyond the 1,200RPM capacity. The gears would be attached to either a water pump or a generator of 500-600W capacity, said Arvind Kumar, a professor in BIT, Mesras mechanical engineering department. The water pump can then be used to lift water to a height of around 3m and then fields can be irrigated through drip irrigation. Proper care and maintenance is needed for the oxen-driven generators. Experts feel this non-conventional energy option has better potential than solar energy devices that cannot function during the monsoon, as the batteries do not get charged. They feel that the problem of irrigation and minimum requirement of electricity can easily be solved in the rural areas of the state if this model is adopted. A single unit, driven by two oxen, has the capacity to generate up to 2KW. The power can be multiplied by using more oxen and machines. The capacity might go up to 2.5KW if four oxen are used. A single unit will require an investment of around Rs 20,000 (20,000.00Rs = 407.173 USD). - Source
11/13/08 - New Laser Technique Seals And Heals Wounds Using carbon dioxide lasers to seal wounds inside the body and out with a technique known as laser welding, a team of Tel Aviv University researchers have perfected a new device to heat body tissue in a precisely controlled manner. With the new device, if the laser begins to overheat and risks burning the tissue, laser power is reduced, and if the temperature is too low to complete a closure, laser power in increased appropriately. Earlier attempts to use carbon dioxide lasers for bonding of cuts in the operating room or in clinics were not very successful. Causing thermal damage, the lasers either undercooked or overcooked the patients delicate tissues. Prof. Katzir set out to find the right temperature for optimal wound healing, and to perfect a device that could maintain this temperature. He is the first to apply the carbon dioxide laser, coupled to optical fibers, for wound closure under a tight temperature control. His innovation is in the use of unique optical fibers made from silver halide developed at Tel Aviv University. The fibers deliver the lasers energy to heat the bonded cut and are used for controlling the temperature. They also make it possible to bond tissues inside the body. Sutures or stitches are not water tight, and blood or urine can pass through cuts, causing severe infection, he says. Also, in many cases, a surgeon needs great skill to perform internal stitching, or in bonding tiny blood vessels, or in mending cuts on the skin so there will be no trace left on the body. - Source
11/13/08 - Mono-Scooter Is Speedy (Nov, 1936) With a little practice, you can get more speed out of this mono-scooter than out of a pair of roller skates. It is made from two roller-skate wheels and a hardwood block as wide as the shoe and about 5 in, longer. Round the ends of the block and slot them to take the wheels. Steel rods serve as axles, and washers are placed on either side of each wheel to keep it true. These should be lubricated. Triangular blocks serve as heel and toe plates, and a single toe strap keeps the scooter on the shoe. Tilting the foot to one side brings the block into contact with the sidewalk to get efficient braking. - Source
11/13/08 - Better Wind Turbines ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent. ExRo's new design replaces a mechanical transmission with what amounts to an electronic one. That increases the range of wind speeds at which it can operate efficiently and makes it more responsive to sudden gusts and lulls. While at the highest wind speeds the blades will still need to be pitched to shed wind, the generator will allow the turbine to capture more of the energy in high-speed winds and gusts. The generator works on the same principles as many ordinary generators: magnets attached to a rotating shaft create a current as they pass stationary copper coils arrayed around the shaft. In ordinary generators, all of the coils are wired together. In ExRo's generator, in contrast, the individual coils can be turned on and off with electronic switches. At low wind speeds, only a few of the coils will switch on--just enough to efficiently harvest the small amount of energy in low-speed wind. (If more coils were active, they would provide more resistance to the revolving magnets.) At higher wind speeds, more coils will turn on to convert more energy into electricity. The switches can be thrown quickly to adapt to fast-changing wind speeds. - Source
11/13/08 - Brain Waves Are Measured with Radio Amplifier (Dec, 1936) With an ordinary radio set for an amplifier, a young scientist at London is measuring brain waves. A fairly regular electrical wave emanates from the human brain during normal thought, but the waves diminish during sleep. The intensity of the waves is measured on an electric meter, enabling research men to study the relative intensity of thought processes. - Source
11/13/08 - Oklahoma Ambulances Debut Sirens That You Can Feel "Booming like a 1980s video game, the Howler can even make liquids ripple Oklahoma's largest ambulance company will become the first ambulance service in the nation to outfit its entire fleet with new Howler sirens, designed to emit low-frequency tones that penetrate objects within 200 feet such as cars to alert drivers." - Source
11/13/08 - In Obama's first 100 days, he needs to... You need to register in order to do anything. But the basic premise is to endorse any number of actions. Endorsements make the item rise to to the top. Currently, the top 10 action items for Obama are: 1. Invest in clean energy and create 5 million new green jobs 2. Responsible, Phased Withdrawal of Troops in Iraq (16 months) 3. Kill the PATRIOT Act 4. Prosecute criminals in Bush administration 5. Enact quality, affordable health care for all 6. Shut down Guantanamo 7. Raise Minimum Wage to a Living Wage 8. Stop domestic surveillance 9. End corporate welfare 10. Enact universal, single-payer healthcare - Source
11/13/08 - You want Change?
11/13/08 - 'Super-microscope' opens at Isis "The world's newest "super microscope" is fired up and ready to go. The machine is known as a pulsed neutron source. But what does that actually mean? Well, if you're a physicist curious to see how matter behaves when no-one is looking, then Isis is your private snoop. If you're an engineer trying to make the hydrogen car a working reality, then Isis is your genie. Want to see how spiders spin silk stronger than steel? Or peer into a newborn baby's lungs as they take their first breath? Isis will grant your wishes - and you get more than three. Up to 40 different experiments can run side by side, now that the second target station "Isis 2" is open." With pics and videos. - Source
11/13/08 - Thought Police - The Persecution of Revisionists: Holocaust Unveiled A film to educate and amaze your friends, family, and community. WHY HAVE SOME people (described hereafter as the "Thought Police") incessantly attacked revisionist historians (meaning historians who question the Establishment version of events, and who use research, scientific tests, and original documents to more closely approach the truth) of all different backgrounds (from Gentiles, to Jews, to Christians, to Muslims, to freethinkers, to Whites, to Arabs, etc.) in some of the most horrible ways imaginable? The Thought Police have not just merely suppressed the revisionists' findings by boycotting them, but have also censored them by promoting laws to make their honest findings punishable by jail time. They have committed arson against the revisionists. They have committed murder. They have thrown acid on revisionists' faces, beat them, destroyed their homes, and engaged in other acts of mayhem. Ernst Zundel was taken away from his American wife, with whom he was living in the hills of Tennessee, and thrown in American, Canadian, and German dungeons. He was imprisoned without charge for three years and is now on trial in Germany for questioning the Holocaust story. Germar Rudolf, a PhD-level chemist, was also taken away from his wife and their child in Illinois -- and deported to Germany to stand trial for daring to publish scientific findings that cast doubt on WWII Jewish claims. David Irving, a best-selling author and world-renowned historian, was just sentenced to three years in jail in Austria for uttering merely one single sentence 15 years ago! The Thought Police will stop at nothing to silence these brave men. We truly do live in Orwellian Times. - Source
11/13/08 - YouTube Converter Convert online YouTube videos direct to PC, iPod, iPhone, PSP and Mobile with mp3 option. - Source
11/13/08 - Ontario deals blow to web-based ridesharing service Two weeks after proclaiming "We fought the good fight and won!", web rideshare company PickupPal learned that the good fight has, in fact, been lost. The company was up against Canadian bus company Trentway-Wagar, which took PickupPal to the Ontario Highway Transport Board after complaining that the ride-matching service fell afoul of the province's obscenely strict ride-sharing laws. The ruling has just come down (PDF)PickupPal owes CAN$2,836.07 to the province and another CAN$8,500 to Trentway-Wagar. So why does PickupPal still think it won? PickupPal's web sites serves as a matchmaker for drivers and passengers, allowing them to work out compensation and other issues, but it does nothing to check on insurance, roadworthiness of the vehicles, driving history, or anything else. PickupPal operates in 52 countries and says it has not faced such a challenge anywhere else. When the complaint was first announced this summer, the site attracted plenty of sympathy from onlookers across the political spectrum who worried that Trentway-Wagar was more interested in putting competition out of business than it was in safety standards. This led to a push to reform Ontario law, and an amendment to the Public Vehicles Act was finally introduced last month. - Source
11/13/08 - Scientists Discover Proteins that Control Evolution What they are saying is that evolution is not entirely random, as Darwin believed. The researchers were tinkering with a set of proteins forming the electron transport chain, a system that regulates energy use in cells. They discovered that the proteins were correcting any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations, constantly restoring the chain to working order. A mathematical analysis revealed that these proteins seem to make these minute corrections all the time, steering organisms toward evolutionary changes that make the creature fitter. What we have found is that certain kinds of biological structures exist that are able to steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness. The data just jumps off the page and implies we all have this wonderful piece of machinery inside that's responding optimally to evolutionary pressure. Biological change is always driven by random mutation and selection, but at certain pivotal junctures in evolutionary history, such random processes can create structures capable of steering subsequent evolution toward greater sophistication and complexity. - Source
11/13/08 - Science under Obama Lets look in a little more detail about what American science can expect from president Obama. First, Obamas answers to ScienceDebate2008 show that he will not allow the war on science perpetrated under George W. Bush to continue. Scientistsespecially those in the governments employcan look forward to an administration that will not be beset by recurrent scandals over political meddling with research. In fact, Obama has specifically pledged to protect scientist whistleblowers and make sure his administration avoids political interference with scientific reports released to the public. These are the right sounds to be making, although thus far, they havent been made very loudly. The two issues are perhaps most dramatically differentiated by how simple it will be to resolve the one, and how staggeringly difficult it will be to even begin to address the other. On stem cells, Obama can simply reverse President Bushs August 2001 executive order limiting research to pre-existing cell lines; Congress already wanted this before Democrats controlled both houses, as they do now. On climate change, in contrast, this administration needs a massive and sustained effort to: 1) pass a cap-and-trade bill to cut emissions; 2) invest dramatically in renewable energy research and development; 3) prepare to negotiate an international greenhouse gas treaty, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol; and 4) begin a climate change adaptation and readiness agenda for the nation. On the first two points, Obama has outlined ambitious plansmost notably, to set the U.S. on course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and to invest $150 billion in renewable energy over the next decade. The real question, however, will be whether Obama and progressive members of Congress stick to their guns on a strong cap-and-trade bill despite the dismal economic situationone in which any legislation will be mercilessly attacked for an alleged capacity to damage the economy and raise energy prices. - Source
11/13/08 - Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline. Experts say the precipitous drop-off in spam comes from Internet providers unplugging McColo Corp., a hosting provider in Northern California that was the home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day. / Spam gets 1 response per 12,500,000 emails. - Source
11/13/08 - Study shows divorce can be deadly A new German study shows that people who divorce die years sooner than others, putting them in company with smokers, the homeless, and the poorly educated. Divorced people on average have a life span nine years shorter than others, according to the study by Rostock Universitys centre for demographic research released this week. We assume that being divorced strongly influences lifestyle, study contributor Gabriele Doblhammer told daily paper Der Tagesspiegel on Wednesday. Married people seem to have a more regulated lifestyle than singles, and the divorced embody a combination of factors that can lead to an earlier death. People found to have the highest life expectancy were non-smokers, moderate drinkers, married, high-school educated and employed. Females from this group also had one to two children. - Source
11/11/08 - AVG Virus Scanner Removes Critical Windows File "The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints." / AVG's new antivirus update tells users to delete a critical XP file, leaving machines "endlessly rebooting or unable to reboot at all." - Source
11/11/08 - Scientists Discover Why Sharks Can Swim So Fast "Shortfin mako sharks can shoot through the ocean at up to 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres an hour). Now a trick that helps them to reach such speeds has been discovered the sharks can raise their scales to create tiny wells across the surface of their skin, reducing drag like the dimples on a golf ball." / The minute scales just 200 micrometers long are made from tough enamel, such as that found on teeth, giving the skin a rough texture like sandpaper. Lying flat, they had previously been found to reduce drag as the shark swims. The team created artificial shark skin with a 16 x 24 array of synthetic scales, each 2 centimetres in length and angled at 90° to the surface of the "skin". The experiments revealed that tiny vortices or whirlpools formed within the cavities between the scales. These vortices form a kind of "buffer layer" between the skin's surface and the fast moving fluid, preventing a turbulent wake from forming behind the shark. Since a wake has a lower pressure than the rest of the fluid, it exerts a backwards pull on an object, decreasing its speed and making it harder to change direction. Eliminating this wake decreases the overall drag on the shark, allowing it to travel faster and move more easily without the thick, syrupy feeling humans get as they try to move through water. - Source
11/11/08 - How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'" - Source
11/11/08 - Cancer nanobomb Balaji Panchapakesan at the University of Delaware, Newark, suggests destroying cancers in situ using exploding nanotubes. His idea is to fill carbon nanotubes with water before injecting them into a tumour. The area is then zapped with laser light which causes the water inside the nanotubes to boil. The tremendous pressure created by the heating causes the "nanobombs" to burst apart, killing nearby cells. Using the correct wavelength and intensity of the laser light makes it possible to ensure only the "nanobombs" absorb significant amounts of energy, and that they explode well before other tissue is damaged. Panchapakesan has already used the technique to kill BT474 cells - a cell line originating from a breast tumour. The exploding nanotubes could be made to target tumours by labelling them with an antibody specific to the cancer cell receptors, he says, and adding a chemotherapy drug to the water could wipe out any cells that survive or escape a blast. Nanobomb treatments would be minimally invasive, meaning fast recovery times and fewer side effects, says Panchapakesan. / (Isn't this the same thing Kanzius discovered? - JWD) - Source
11/11/08 - Super Chimney: Fix Global Warming, Clean Energy and Irrigate Deserts Michael Pesochinsky has developed the idea of utilizing super-chimney technology as a unique way to avert a global warming catastrophe at the same time as lucratively generating clean energy and desert irrigation. The invention uses the natural property of hot air to rise and suggests using extremely tall chimneys as facilitators of that upward air-movement. "Suppose we construct a super-chimney three miles tall," theorizes Pesochinsky, such a structure will yield the following positive results: * produce as much energy as 15 super powerful nuclear stations; * induce rain generation in surrounding areas and will produce millions of tons of fresh water precipitation * it will transform at least 300 square miles of desert into arable land, will allow trap approximately 1,500,000 tons of CO2 per year in the newly created arable area. Pesochinsky recently launched a website at www.SuperChimney.org which details his invention, and he encourages all interested parties to visit. According to Pesochinsky, "Just 10 chimneys like the one I propose will offset global warming." - Source
11/11/08 - 'See-Saw' invention could generate power for African schools Daniel Sheridan invented the Energee-Saw after completing voluntary work at a school in Kenya in 2007 while studying consumer product design at the University. The see-saw harnesses the energy of youngsters playing on it and links to a generator, , which can then be used to help light classrooms and power low wattage appliances, such as radios, mp3 players and communication devices. It will be supplied in kit form with local materials used to build the main structure of the unit, reducing logistical costs and the carbon footprint of transportation. It will also serve to engage the community into the building of the product, fostering a pride of ownership. The amount of electricity generated by the Energee-Saw is very small in comparison to the levels of western consumption, but I believe it can make a real difference to schools across the globe currently without power. - Source
11/11/08 - A ray of sunshine for solar energy It's a tricky thing to do. The target, often a tiny little chip no larger than a square centimetre, must be hit with pinpoint precision. Structures must be able to handle strong wind and special tracking systems are needed to make sure the sun is always shining directly. Being off by a few millimetres isn't good enough. Also, the heat that results from focusing 500 suns, and up to 2,000 suns for some technologies, requires some creative cooling to keep the cells from melting. Morgan Solar has come up with a completely different approach that relies on what it calls a light-guided solar optic. Basically, pieces of acrylic or glass are designed to capture sunlight as it hits a triangular surface less than a centimetre thick. Once inside the material, the sunlight is trapped and corralled through a bottom layer to one corner, where a tiny sliver of solar cell is positioned to absorb the barrage of concentrated light. The triangles are packaged together to form a square about the size of a Compact Disc case and dozens of these squares make up a single panel. "It's bloody amazing," says William Masek, president and chief technology officer of Brockville-based Upper Canada Solar Generation Ltd., which has plans to build 50 megawatts of solar farms in Ontario. In the next few weeks he will begin field-testing Morgan Solar's prototypes. "They probably have the most breakthrough solar technology announced in a long time." The materials that make up the panels are nothing fancy or expensive, Nicolas Morgan says during an interview at the company's office. The solar panels are flatter than the competition, lighter, cheaper to build and can concentrate the light at up to 1,500. "This is completely new. Nobody has done it this way," he says. - Source
11/11/08 - You Tube To Show Full Films From MGM American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Incorporated (MGM) and Google-owned video sharing website You Tube have recently clinched a deal entailing that several full-length films distributed by MGM would be available for watching on the aforementioned website. The media company has announced they would be posting full-length action movies on Youtube, as well, including Bulletproof Monk and The Magnificent Seven. All the films are set to be free to watch by users and they are scheduled to feature ads alongside them as Internet surfers are enjoying the thrill of full productions on the popular website. You Tube has also clinched deals with independent studio Lionsgate and broadcast network CBS, which this month, have kicked off their posting of videos on the website by offering full-length episodes of Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210. - Source
11/11/08 - Maldives Seek To Buy A New Homeland The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the countrys billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland - as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the countrys first democratically elected president has told the Guardian. - Source
11/11/08 - Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling We see all sorts of ridiculous patent applications and patents, but my favorites tend to be the patents that have to do with patents themselves (such as the patent app on a method for filing a patent). However, the folks over at Patently-O have highlighted a fascinating patent application from an attorney at Halliburton, which appears to be an attempt to patent the process of patent trolling. The application covers, quite explicitly, having a company (we'll say Company A) that does not invent something, find a company (Company B) that did invent something, but chose to use trade secret protection, rather than patents. Then, the Company A files a patent covering Company B's technology, and then use the issued patent to get money out of Company B. - Source
11/11/08 - Black man given nation's worst job African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break." - Source
11/11/08 - Forget Corn: Mushrooms May Hold Key to Energy Crisis Danish scientists in China, Brazil, Denmark and the U.S. are testing mushrooms and lichen to find one that will turn corn cobs and sugarcane stalks into biofuel. An affordable alternative to gasoline made from plant waste would end concerns that global hunger for energy is driving up food prices worldwide. Fungi like mushrooms and lichen make enzymes to eat rotting logs and decaying leaves. Biofuel producers use the proteins to break down the complex carbohydrates in plant cells into a soup- like mixture of simple sugars that yeast can eat. In a process much like making beer, yeast ferments the mixture, producing ethanol. Enzymes now on the market can't break down the tougher parts of plants effectively enough to be affordable. The search is daunting because of the sheer number of fungi. Researchers have amassed 480,264 different kinds and say as many as 1.5 million species may exist. Each specializes in feeding at specific points in the cycle of decay, and can have anywhere from two to 100 different enzymes. Some fungi grow worldwide, while factors such as temperature, soil type and altitude limit others. - Source
11/11/08 - Unusual Architecture Unusual Architecture is a blog dedicated to collect all the most unusual, strange, weird and crazy buildings of our world in a big and easy to use list. Each and every unusual building has its own profile, where you can find more information and pictures of it. Visitors also can vote for the best architectural structure, and the results are displayed in The Top Rated Architecture. - Source
11/11/08 - What Is the Future of Suburbia? James Kunstler: The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins. There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. I say this because American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future and linked our very identity with it we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements. Compounding the problem is the fact that we ditched our manufacturing economy for a suburban sprawl building economy (a.k.a. the housing bubble), meaning we came to base our economy on building even more stuff with no future. This is a hell of a problem, since it is at once economic, socio-political, and circumstantial. Heres what I think will happen: First, we are in great danger of mounting a futile campaign to sustain the unsustainable, that is, of defending suburbia at all costs. - Source
11/11/08 - Gun Sales Surge After Election Since last week's presidential election, assault rifles have been flying off the shelves, and suppliers are having a hard time keeping up with demand. Big Bear Sporting Goods has been receiving a constant stream of customers wanting assault rifles, and some people are actually buying more than one at time. - Source
11/11/08 - Hand gesture multitouch using only a $30 webcam w/video Andy Wilson of MS Research demonstrates a multitouch-like hand gesture interface. Get this. It uses only a standard webcam. The webcam is positioned to watch your keyboard and by simply making a pinching gesture with your thumb and index finger, you can grab and move objects on the screen, or rotate them by twisting your hand. Pinching with two hands, you can control two separate points on the screen, allowing you to easily perform more complex zoom and rotation actions by pulling your hands apart or moving them relative to each other. I haven't seen source for this anywhere, but he does describe the technique, which is quite clever. By subtracting the background and examining the topology of the remaining image (just the solid background and your hands), you can easily determine how many shapes are made by the background. With fingers unpinched, the background is a single shape, albeit with a hand shaped isthmus pushing into it. When you pinch and form a circle with your thumb and forefinger, things change. A little island is created in the middle of your fingers and the background becomes two distinct shapes. The position and rotation of the inner shape provides you enough information to control objects on the screen. - Source
11/11/08 - A Doctor, a Mutation and a Potential Cure for AIDS A Bone Marrow Transplant to Treat a Leukemia Patient Also Gives Him Virus-Resistant Cells; Many Thanks, Sample 61. The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn't an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The development suggests a potential new therapeutic avenue and comes as the search for a cure has adopted new urgency. While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it "a very good sign" and a virtual "proof of principle" for gene-therapy approaches. In 1989, Dr. Rossi had a case eerily similar to the one in Berlin. A 41-year-old patient with AIDS and lymphoma underwent radiation and drug therapy to ablate his bone marrow and received new cells from a donor. It is not known if those cells had the protective CCR5 mutation, because its relation to HIV hadn't been discovered yet. But after the transplant, HIV disappeared from the patient's blood. The patient died of his cancer 47 days after the procedure. Autopsy tests from eight organs and the tumor revealed no HIV. - Source
11/11/08 - World's Largest Truck Goes Robotic The largest truck in the world is about to become the largest robotic vehicle in the world. Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up with engineers from Caterpillar to automate the 700-ton trucks, which are made to haul loads up to 240 tons from mines. That's nearly two million pounds of metal, fuel and stone powered by a 3,550-horsepower, 24-valve engine moving at up to 42 miles per hour, with software and a robot at the wheel. - Source
11/11/08 - Canada helps find snow on Mars and then hushes it up It should have been a proud Canadian moment in space as our first mission to Mars made a surprising discovery this fall: Snow is falling on the red planet. But the Canadian Space Agency wasn't allowed to talk about its achievement, because its staff was muzzled during the federal election. Instead it left NASA to make the announcement and grab the glory. Canadian space officials refused to speak to reporters, even to tip them to NASA's announcement, despite years of planning and $37 million of Canadians' tax money invested in this Mars mission. They sat out NASA's news conference. Political orders got in the way. - Source
11/11/08 - FEMA Firefighters Manual Covers UFO Attacks, Crashes This video shows how FEMA no only deals with credible threats as hurricanes and terrorist attacks, but also with credible threats like alien attacks and UFO crashes: They have an entire chapter dedicated to this topic in their firefighters manual. Great. As if it wasn't enough with the UK government revealing airplane encounters with UFOs and Hubble discovering unidentified objects in Space to fuel my...fantasies. - Source
11/08/08 - Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb. The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.' The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year. - Source
11/08/08 - AFS Trinity Pulls 150 MPG SUV out of LA Auto Show The company's decision followed actions by the LA Auto Show to muzzle AFS Trinity from highlighting the 150 miles per gallon fuel economy of its XH150 prototype vehicles. "The suppression by the automakers of information about technologies such as this raises serious questions about the judgment, vision, intentions and capabilities of the leadership of these companies," said Edward W. Furia, Chairman and CEO of AFS Trinity. "Such conduct by the automakers, who are currently seeking tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, ostensibly to develop fuel efficient vehicle technologies, is evidence they are reluctant to embrace solutions they didn't invent." First shown at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit in January, 2008, two XH150 prototypes have toured the country for the last ten months and received positive reactions from the American public, national media (see coverage at http://www.afstrinity.com/press-coverage.htm), public officials, Governors, Senators and Members of Congress as well as automotive fleet managers and engineers in Austin, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Seattle, Livermore and Sacramento. Furia said, "No one questions the sales potential of a 150-MPG SUV that can carry a whole family and provide better acceleration than similar gasoline models. Every single person who has driven these cars loves them and wants one. We have built two XH150 prototypes and demonstrated them across the country. Yet, none of the major automakers has accepted our invitation to see and drive them, let alone license the technology and mass produce them. They usually claim that they are going to come up with something of their own in the future. In other words, they reject breakthroughs they didn't invent." "In the meantime," Furia said, "American auto plants are closing, men and women who are among the best trained, most productive auto workers in the world are losing their jobs in record numbers, and America is in danger of losing the last vestiges of its heartland heavy industrial base altogether. We want people to know that a super fuel-efficient automotive solution to our dependence on oil already exists, which the driving public enthusiastically supports and that major automakers can license and mass-produce within an estimated three years." AFS Trinity's 150-MPG mileage estimate is based on a typical week of driving: 40 miles, 6 days per week and 80 miles on one weekend day each week. The first 40 miles of every day are electric, with gasoline being used only for distances beyond 40 miles. For this driving profile, the XH-150 uses up to 2 gallons of gas to travel 320 miles, which works out to 160 mpg, which the company rounds down to 150 miles per gallon. Furia explained that the difference between the AFS Trinity approach to energy storage in a plugin hybrid and that of other developers is the use of ultracapacitors and proprietary control electronics to solve the power and life cycle limitations of batteries. AFS Trinity's XH-150 plug-in hybrid electric car recharged from a household power plug. This "extreme hybrid" travels 40 miles in electric-only mode before the gas engine is needed. 78% of Americans drive less than 40 miles per day; so many would never have to visit a gas station if they owned an XH-150. - Source
11/08/08 - Treo SuperTurbine The Selsam Off-Shore SUPERTURBINE(TM) lowers costs by eliminating all unnecessary components that do not directly contribute to power generation. Flotation near the surface forms a fulcrum, with the weight of the rotors and driveshaft balanced by a downward force from mooring below. The result, combined with the force of the wind, defining the projecting angle of the shaft. The rotors can be staggered, spiral, or in line. Simple in its design, the turbine is an engineering beauty. The driveshaft is made from carbon-fiber formula-1 racing car driveshafts bonded to carbon-fiber hang-glider spars. This government-sponsored project has by far set the world record for power output at all wind speeds from a 7-foot diameter wind turbine of any type. - Source
11/08/08 - The Power to Light the World Walter Owens, a retired electrical engineer, has invented a power generator system that actually creates it's own fuel source - static electricity. Owens says the machine can provide a complete power source for homes, businesses, planes trains and automobiles. In fact, Owens says the applications are nearly limitless, but that's not what is important. What's important is that others are saying it, too. The machine (Owens' small, test-model) has been tested and examined by independent electric motor experts and the results were noted in a report signed by Higinio Rodriguez, president of Gulf Coast Electric Motor Service, Inc. in Pensacola. According to the report, the machine requires 24 volts to start the motor and only 12 volts to start the static charge. However, it takes no amps or watts to supply the static charge. The reports says "How long will it run and at what loss of volts and amps? No loss - indefinitely running." Owen's self-sustaining machine produced over 4,600 watts and required no coal, oil, gas or liquid fuel and produced no pollution and no waste by-products. Owens brought his working model to the Herald office in the back of his pick-up truck and gave a demonstration for Herald staff and WMBB-TV 13 reporter Chris Mitchell, who broadcast a report on Owens and his generator on Monday evening. That machine, he said, could supply power to three individual homes - indefinitely. The report by Gulf Coast Electric Motor Service noted that "power output can be significantly increased by reduction of flywheel weight and other system improvements via a research and development program." To find out more about Walter Owens and his unique power generator system, call (334) 858-3308 or 858-3721. / His idea: a patent-pending prototype for a generator fueled by static electricity. "If this goes over, I'm going to change the nation," Walters said, as he began to demonstrate how the apparatus worked. "It works this way," he said. "Static electricity is all around us, everyday. If you stick your hand in Styrofoam peanuts and pull it out, they stick. That's static electricity. My machine draws the static electricity from the air, as well as producing more. That charge then goes into a coil system that magnifies the charge and converts it into D/C power. "That power then comes out of 12 different wires with enough amps to make electricity flow," he said. A power converter is used to change the electricity converted from D/C power to A/C power for use in everyday needs, he said. Operating on four car batteries, the machine works by using start-up energy from the batteries to drive a D/C motor that turns a flywheel. That magnetic flywheel runs through a system where 300 feet of 10-guage cooper wires, enclosed in sheepskin, push the electricity into 12 coils, with each coil producing somewhere around 10 volts of electricity. "This thing will build enough electrical power to operate an automobile," he said. "It needs no gas, no oil. This one unit is more than enough to run a house." - Source
11/08/08 - Inventions: Ohmic Pasteurizer and CardioMate to heal/protect Organs Prof Ir Dr Norman Mariun won a gold medal for his research product entitled 'Ohmic Heated Pasteuriser'. The invention was designed to pasteurise liquid food ingredients without heat exchanger and boiler. "The invention of the product required minimal cost, was easy to manoeuvre and fabricates quality production, apart from saving energy," said Dr Norman in a statement here today. Another gold medal winner was Prof Dr Suhaila Mohamed for her research product, 'CardioMate-Functional Food Seasoning for Cardiovascular Health'. "The outcome of this product has effectively aided in recovering from diabetes, high-blood pressure, high cholesterol, atherosclerosis (the ruin of the blood vessels), obesity, kidney-related diseases and combating different types of cancer in animal studies," she said. Dr Suhaila said the invention could also protect internal organs and reduce the oxidative pressure, besides decreasing the death rate in animals. The bronze medal winner was researcher Dr Alyani Ismail, with her product, 'Compact 'Butterfly-shaped' Ultra-Wide Band Microwave Filter'. - Source
11/08/08 - Business Veterans to Help Inventions Spring to Life Every invention begins with a single eureka moment or some brilliant revelation that causes the inventor to take action. These epiphanies become the idea seeds that will eventually get planted around the world. But we can only wish the process was as simple as adding water and fertilizer and waiting for the ideas to spring to life. Inventions are not just patents to be hung on a wall. They are the starting point for a new business enterprise. The Inventor Boot Camp will help you focus on whats important. We will show you ways to leverage your time and resources, eliminate unnecessary work, and direct your energies towards driving your product forward. And most importantly, we will teach you what it takes to become successful. EVENT: Inventor Boot Camp - 2008 DATE: November 10, 2008 - Monday TIMES: 9:00 am - 1:30 pm WEBSITE: www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=356 LOCATION: The Cable Center, 2000 Buchtel Boulevard, Denver, C0 80210 DIRECTIONS: Click here for map - Source
11/08/08 - Bioheat Fires Up Homes in New England Owner Andrew Kellar admits it was difficult to attract customers at first because of the misconception that people would have to modify their heating systems or vehicles to use Bioheat and biofuel. "Anybody that uses traditional oil to heat their homes can use the Bioheat product that we have," he says. "It's nothing more than a blend of traditional home heating oil with this biofuel that gets blended in. Shows up in a traditional looking oil truck. "There's no modifications to their home heating system that they have to do. It actually helps the systems to run more efficiently." In fact, he points out, Bioheat in its purest form has a solvent characteristic that helps improve the efficiency of a heating system something regular home heating oil doesn't have. A month after her first fill-up with Bioheat, Shannon Hill checked her furnace fuel tank. The needle had barely budged. Thinking there must be some mistake, she tapped her gauge to see if it was broken. But the reading was accurate. Her furnace had burned less than half the usual amount of fuel. "I saw a significant decrease in fuel consumption. I didn't do anything different no insulation, no new roof, no nothing other than switch," she marvels. "Not only do I feel better about it financially, but obviously environmentally, it was my main reason in calling." Simply Green has a firm commitment to use non-food sources for its fuel. These days, the company's so-called feedstock comes from animal fats that would simply go to waste, as well as used restaurant grease and a variety of soy products. But Kellar says they're also looking at a new source: algae. - Source
11/08/08 - What Will It Be Like to Have a Smart President? Today we celebrate this triumph of decency over personal attack, of peace over war, of intelligence over a belief that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs just 6,000 years ago. What will it be like to have a smart president? Science, banished for eight years, will return. Imagine supporting our country's greatest minds as they seek to cure illness, discover new forms of energy, and work to save the planet. I know, pinch me. We really don't have much time. There is big work to do. But this is the week for all of us to revel in this great moment. Be humble about it. - Source
11/08/08 - Home Mini-Refinery Makes Ethanol & Biodiesel Simultaneously A Texas-based company has announced the worlds first mini-refinery for consumer use that can produce both ethanol and biodiesel from the same small machine at the same time. Its capable of generating up to 120 gallons per day of ethanol and 450 gallons per day of biodiesel. Consisting of two pieces of equipment an ethanol boiler and the mini-refinery the whole system can fit into an area of less than 30 square feet with 8 feet of clearance and is completely automated. - Source
11/08/08 - SearchQuest: Worldwide Patent Search Company SearchQuestTM is the only search company to search the entire world for published or previously issued patents. Our aggressive searching procedures go back hundreds of years rather than the convenient 40 years covered by most searching techniques. Just as important, we search for products currently being sold but not patented. SearchQuestTM Patent Search services provides critical and pertinent information to anyone or any group trying to invent a product, invest in a product or process, or work on intellectual property. You should be using SearchQuestTM Patent Search if you are one of the following: Corporate or individual inventor - Angel or venture capital investor - Attorney or law firm engaged in IP work on behalf of clients. SearchQuest TM Patent Search gives you all the information you will need to make intelligent decisions. - Source
11/08/08 - The Golden Ray biodiesel processor Since June 2007 you are now permitted to 'produce' up to 2500 litres of biodiesel annually without having to pay ANY duty or VAT. 2500 litres is enough fuel for 2 average family cars per year. This means if you make your own biodiesel you will be saving over a £1.00 per litre converting used cooking oil (WVO) into biodiesel. This saving is set to increase with the ever rising cost of diesel from the pumps. Make your own Biodiesel from used cooking oil for 21p/litre - save £55 on 50 litres at £1.31/litre. - Source
11/08/08 - Is It Time to Kill Off the Flush Toilet? To flush or not to flush. That was the question that designers and ecologists were asking each other this week as hundreds of people who spend a lot of time thinking about these things convened for the annual World Toilet Summit and Expo in Macau. Toilets on show run the gamut from a cardboard box complete with a hole, plastic bag and pouch of waterless magic pathogen-busting dust ($50), to a high-tech 'uber-toilet,' featuring an in-seat warmer/cooler, male and female water jets, an in-bowl light (why? why?) and a USB port so you can connect your mp3 player for your soothing tune of choice ($1,200). City populations have mushroomed, sewers have become overburdened and water has become scarcer. Now, the flushing loo that human innovation that lifted the industrialized world out of its own dirt, cholera and dysentery is quickly becoming one of the more egregious instruments of waste in this time of acutely finite resources. "The world can't sustain this toilet," says Jack Sim, the founder of the World Toilet Organization the other WTO an organization that advocates for sustainable sanitation solutions for all. "This 'flush and forget' attitude creates a new problem which we have to revisit." Chances are you're dumping up to 22 liters of drinkable water every day, one three- to six-liter flush at a time.Among their larger visions for collective waste disposal and treatment on display was a network of low-water toilets that separated solids from liquids and assigned them to reservoirs shared by an apartment building or block of houses. Those resevoirs would then produce fertilizer, soil conditioner and energy producing methane and dramatically cut the cost to the public of waste disposal. - Source
11/08/08 - Altzheimer's, anti-inflammation and Turmeric Turmeric, the spice that gives yellow curry its color, is widely used in Asia not only for its earthy flavor but also for its therapeutic power. In ancient Hindu medicine, it was used to treat sprains and swelling. Modern medicine uncovered its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, which have been used to treat everything from liver disorders and diabetic wounds to runny noses. Some bandage brands in India even contain turmeric as a disinfectant. Recently, scientists added another potential benefit to the list: preventing Alzheimers disease. Intrigued by the fact that the elderly population of India has one of the lowest rates of Alzheimers cases in the world, researchers at UCLA began looking at differences between the American and Indian diets and landed on turmeric. - Source
11/08/08 - Gravitational Vortex 50Kw Power Plant is Safe for Fish While trying to find a method for aerating water without energy input, Austrian engineer Franz Zotlöterer stumbled across the idea of a mini-power plant which is simple to construct and has a turbine efficiency of 80% but which is safe for fish due to low turbine speed and improves water quality by oxygenation. Needless to say, he quickly applied for the patents. The technology can be applied with water drop as little as 0.7 meters. Zotlöterer's website suggests an idyllic installation along a modern stream that has had its meanders rudely obliterated in the interest of human civilization. His vision is to restore the health of the running water to where it was before human intervention led to reduced oxygenation due to laminar flows--while winning power at the same time. In the prototype installation, the water drop is 1.6 meters, with a flow of 1.3 m3/second, but the utilized water is 1 m3/s flow with 1.3 meters drop. The vortex basin has a diameter of 5.5 meters. In the first year of operation, the plant has yielded 50,000 kWatt-hours of electricity--with efficiency of around 73%, a little lower than the theoretical 80% achievable efficiency due to the use of smaller generator for ease of operation. The cost for installation was about 40,000 after about 40% subsidy. At close to 1$/watt capacity, that is a sweet point that may make this technology a viable alternative energy. If the claims that the turbine has little negative impact or is even beneficial for wildlife can be supported, this would be interesting for anyone with a home sitting on a hill near a stream. - Source
11/08/08 - Fountain of Youth: Drug Restores Muscles A daily dose of an investigational medication has been found to restore muscle mass in the arms and legs of older adults and improve some of their biochemistry to levels found in healthy young adults, suggesting an anti-frailty drug has been found. The drug, called MK-677, was evaluated for its safety and effectiveness in a study that showed the drug restored 20 percent of muscle mass loss associated with normal aging. - Source
11/08/08 - Experiment-ruining chemicals leach from plastic lab equipment Thousands of scientists could be unwittingly ruining their own experiments merely by using standard plastic lab equipment, according to a new study. Reporting in Science1, Holt and his colleagues show that the plastic tubes they were using were leaching the disinfectant di(2-hydroxyethyl)methyldodecylammonium (DiHEMDA) into water and the lubricant oleamide into methanol and DMSO. "The compounds that leached out of the plastic were remarkably potent inhibitors," Holt told Nature News. "We were getting variability caused by these leachates that could completely mask the effects of the drugs." Although some tubes leached almost no contaminants, even brief exposure to some tubes gave concentrations of around 4050 parts per million of oleamide in DMSO and around 200350 parts per million DiHEMDA in water. Another researcher in the department found a similar problem, suggesting that leachates from plastic pipette tips, tubes and micro-plates could be affecting the work of thousands of researchers worldwide. "I suspect quite a large number of researchers are going to have their results affected," says Holt. These contaminants are used during plastics manufacture. "People in any big science department will say that they don't trust plastic in some experiments," says Holt. But the identity of the compounds responsible has never been determined before. - Source
11/08/08 - Unless we get Smarter, we'll get Poorer Britain has a fine tradition of science and invention: we must build on this. We need to ensure that the natural interest that young children have in science (be it in space, dinosaurs or tadpoles) extends rather than atrophies - that they are taught well at school, and that enough of the most talented opt for scientific careers. We can't undercut India and China in labour costs; we've got to be smarter. It would be demeaning if our educational standards fell below those of Taiwan and South Korea. But for young people to choose scientific careers, there must be a "demand pull", too. There must be goals that appeal to their idealism. Nothing would do more to attract the brightest and best of them into science than a strongly proclaimed national commitment to take a lead in developing what the world needs: vaccines against pandemics, better transport systems and IT, better food-growing. Developing clean-energy technologies demands the priority and urgency of a new Manhattan Project. It offers huge opportunities. Why shouldn't we in the United Kingdom raise our game in these fields, and aim to grasp a lead? We don't know what will be the 21st century counterparts of the electron, quantum theory, the double helix and the computer - nor where the great innovators of the future will get their formative training and inspiration. But one thing seems a near certainty: unless we get smarter, we'll get poorer. We must maximise the chance that the key creative ideas of the 21st century germinate and (even more) are exploited here in Britain. - Source
11/08/08 - Thoroughly Invade Someone's Privacy with 123people People search engine 123people.com aggregates search results from several different sources online and off. Simply enter a person's name, a city or zip code, and 123people will display search results from social networks, telephone listings, web pages, Wikipedia and the like. A quick search on my likely new representative in city government, David Chiu, turned up some good candidates for his home address and phone number, and certainly found plenty of photos on Flickr and web sites and articles related to his recent campaign (as well as plenty of information about David Chiu, competitive poker player and others). Potentially creepy? Yes. Potentially useful? Also yes. - Source
11/08/08 - Water and Information We know from bio-resonance that water retains information. Your body is mostly water, so it is a library, not just of your physical condition but of your mind and your soul. Pictured here are photos of frozen water crystals taken by Prof. Masaru Emoto. These photos and many others are in his magnificent book about resonance called, Messages from Water. He takes a small tube full of water and labels it with a word or two and then he freezes it. He then photographs the water crystals from the sample. The first one pictured here was labeled A. Hitler, you can see how deformed and ugly the crystals are. If you look at the spots marked by the arrows you can see several demonic faces that have appeared in the water sample. When you feel or speak of hatred your blood begins to change, you become the hologram of hate, and the demonic travels with you wherever you go, until you change your mind anyway. In the second photo, the water was labeled with the words love/appreciation. You can see the beauty and the symmetry in the sample. It has a perfection to it. When you allow this emotion, the water in your body, your blood, begins to change to match the beauty of that sentiment. The third photo is a sample of water after a prayer has been offered over the water. Here again you see the stunning beauty and symmetry of the water crystal. The function of the WHITE® light is to repattern the bio-resonance of the water in your body, removing clusters of old information and deformity and building a new symmetry of harmony and balance. / How does the HL (High Brightness LED) light work? - HL light technology is based on a thin plastic film that forms one ring that the non-coherent light has to pass through. This treated plastic ring is mounted inside the upper rim of the light pen. The illumination of water by a non-coherent light produces coherence within the light, and consequently has a powerful effect on the water. The modulation is brought by its carrier, the light beam. The modulation puts the "quasi-free" electrons of the coherent domains (CDs) in rotation at an angular frequency approximately of the same order of magnitude of its own frequency. This produces a fading of the binding between CDs and non-coherent water, and in energetic terms an erasing of previously excited information (or stagnation). The HL lights are a direct derivation of the WHITE HB lights historically used solely by medical doctors. / They hint this is an off the shelf high brightness led with a polarizing filter which makes the emitted light 'coherent'. - Source
11/08/08 - Green Initiatives Get Slaughtered in California, Will Media Notice? Californians by very wide margins defeated two green initiatives that anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts in the media and in legislative houses across the fruited plain should take heed...but will they? To begin with, Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40 percent of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50 percent by 2025. Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high fuel economy or alternative fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology. Will global warming-obsessed media share this news with the citizenry? Shouldn't this be HUGE news given President-elect Obama's green sympathies and his desire to enact a carbon cap and trade scheme to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? - Source
11/08/08 - Earth's Fourth Dimension Your weight is not the same everywhere. Because Earth is not a perfect sphere, the pull of gravity is stronger in some places than in others. It's also in a constant state of change, moving with Earth's mantle, falling sea levels, and even tropical storms. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, better known as GRACE, was launched in 2002 by NASA and the German Aerospace Center to measure exactly how what goes up must come down. 1 AMAZING GRACE - Before GRACE, scientists had only a vague idea of what Earth's gravity map might look like. But even the tiniest rises and dips in Earth's gravity push GRACE's two identical satellites together or pull them apart, generating a map so precise it can chart monthly changes in Earth's crust and seasonal ocean currents. 2 BIG BEER BELLY - Earth's rotation causes our planet to bulge at the equator. This extra girth around the middle partly explains why things weigh more at the poles. 3 RAPID WEIGHT LOSS - Once the central bulge is accounted for, more subtle gravity differences appear. For example, what goes up falls a tad faster in London than it does in Athens. 4 ULTIMATE YO-YO DIET - Earth's mantle has mountain-valley systems resulting from old tectonic clashes, which make gravity's pull strongest in the southwestern Pacific and weakest just off the southern tip of India. So the fastest way to lose weight is a direct flight from Singapore to Sri Lanka. 5 BUILT LIKE AN AMAZON - Annual flooding increases (reddish areas) and decreases (bluish areas) the gravity of the Amazon basin. Because GRACE is sensitive enough to measure rainfall, it helps scientists understand how climate changes affect the rainy season. 6 THE BIGGEST LOSER - From 2002 to 2005, GRACE found that Antarctica's ice mass had decreased by 36 cubic miles a year, helping prove that global warming and melting polar ice play a role in rising sea levels. - Source
11/08/08 - Mexican Scientists make Diamonds out of Tequila Researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have found that tequila blanco contains just the right mix of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen that when turned into a vapor will deposit itself on stainless steel or silicon as a diamond film. Initially using an ethanol/water mix, they noticed that tequila had the same ratio. Their concern that other constituents in it would contaminate results evaporated after they got nanometric-sized spherical diamonds. The tequila was heated to 1470 ºF in a reaction chamber, breaking down the gas and creating diamond crystals 100-400 nm in size and accumulating into a film. Plans are being made to exploit the discovery for industrial applications by 2011. - Source
11/05/08 - Tesla Turbines for Fun and Profit! [Rick] has been building Tesla turbines in various ways and posting his projects to youtube. For those who are unfamiliar, a tesla turbine is a fanless turbine that uses a smooth central disk spun by friction from a gas or fluid. Since the turbine itself has no protrusions, it is extremely stable. There are lots of other benefits, which can be explored on the Wikipedia page. [Rick], as you can see from the video above has found several uses for them, from Halloween props, to generators for lights, to an automated shake flashlight shaker, you can even watch him rev one up to destruction. Though most of these are at relatively low speeds, he has shown that he can make one from CD spindles that is stable enough to reach 10,000 RPM. [Rick] admits that all they really do is spin fast and make cool noises, but they do that pretty well. Update: Moments after this was published, we found an instructable by [Rick] on how to build a blender using a tesla turbine. / Mini hydro-electric with MrfixitRick making power from faucet water pressure, using the Tesla CD Turbine and a Head Lamp Generator. The Tesla CD Turbine is a home-made turbine, constructed from CD's, CD spindle, supermagnets, and glue. It is based on the principles of the amazing disc turbine invented by Nikola Tesla in the early 1900's. / The airpowered bladeless turbine (in the photo strip above) was built to test Tesla's claim of high efficiency. On compressed air it ran a 4Kw generator powering eight 500W lamps! - Source
11/05/08 - What Would an Energy Moon Shot Look Like? What would it take for a president to pursue meaningful climate and energy policy in a multitasked world? One approach is an Apollo-scale investment in advanced energy technology. The chances of a quick push of this sort are poor given the state of the economy, but what would a Moon shot for energy look like? One way to consider the question is to look back at the gush of federal research and development dollars that underpinned the actual space race (and led to a string of innovations that NASA says have produced far greater economic benefits than the research cost). The graph above, generated a couple of years ago by Kei Koizumi at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, provides a hint. The yellow band in the graph is, in essence, a portrait of the space race as reflected in federal money for basic R&D related to going into orbit and to the Moon. (The purple band is essentially the war on cancer and similar health research. Military research, at $75 billion a year, doesnt fit in this graph.) The green band is a half-century of federal investment in energy research. And thats not just renewable energy like solar power, but research in all energy sectors. - Source
11/05/08 - Silver-screen audio trick could smooth jerky video AN EFFECT used since the early days of cinema to make the action appear smoother could improve our perception of poor video footage sent to cellphones. Salvador Soto Faraco at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues showed 15 people films of flashing discs of light that increased or decreased in size. When the discs flashed rapidly, they appeared to move forwards or recede. At lower flash rates, they only appeared to move when accompanied with beeps that increased or decreased in volume. This parallels the way fast music helped to create an illusion of motion in early movies. It shows that sounds can fool the brain into seeing motion even without visual cues, a trick that could make low-frame-rate video footage transmitted over a low bandwidth seem less jumpy, the team say. - Source
11/05/08 - Hot nanotube sheets produce music on demand w/video Sheets made of carbon nanotubes behave like a loudspeaker when zapped with a varying electric current, say Chinese researchers. The discovery could lead to new generation of cheap, flat speakers. Shoushan Fan and his research team at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, working with colleagues at Beijing Normal University, created a thin sheet by roughly aligning many 10-nanometer-diameter carbon nanotubes. When they sent an audio frequency current through the sheet, they discovered it acted as a loudspeaker. A standard loudspeaker consists of three basic elements a speaker cone, a voice coil and a magnet. The cone and coil are attached and sit in a permanent magnetic field created by the magnet. When an audio frequency current passes through the voice coil, it creates a temporary magnetic field, and the coil and cone shift relative to the permanent magnetic field. Those shifts induce vibrations in the air molecules near the speaker cone, generating sound. Fan's team wondered whether the nanotube speaker behaved in a similar way. They used a laser vibrometer to look for vibrations in their nanotube speaker as it produced sound, but the sheet remained resolutely static throughout. Instead, they think that the nanotube speaker functions as a thermoacoustic device. When an alternating current passes through the nanotube sheet, the sheet alternates between room temperature and temperatures of up to 80 °C - although for consumer use the oscillation will be to only slightly above room temperature. Those rapid temperature oscillations lead to pressure oscillations in the air next to the film. It is those thermally induced pressure oscillations that are responsible for the sound, rather than any physical movement of the nanotube sheet itself. A nanotube sheet can generate sound waves more efficiently than a platinum sheet - the researchers estimate their sheet is 20 to 30 decibels louder. The nanotube loudspeakers have several key advantages over standard speaker systems, says Jiang. "Conventional loudspeakers which [produce sound] due to the vibration of the cone will fail to emit sound if the cone is broken," he says. "The carbon nanotube loudspeaker does not vibrate, which means it will still emit sound if part of the film is broken." The flexible nanotube sheets can be stretched or flexed into complicated shapes and they still produce sound, Fan says. When fully stretched, the sheets are transparent and so they could be attached to the front of an LCD screen to replace standard speakers. - Source
11/05/08 - Jerry Lewis the Inventor As well as defining postwar American humour and producing a string of hit comedy films, Lewis is also responsible for an invention that changed the way films are made. For the 1960 film The Bellboy Jerry invented a device called the "video assist", now standard on any film set. It allows a director to immediately view a scene that has been filmed. He holds the US patent on the device, which, he says, ensures "my kids will never go to a community college". It was the challenge of directing himself that inspired the invention. "The video assist not only helped me do what I needed to do to be in two places at once, it also gave me tremendous answers that filmmakers for years never had until they looked at the dailies. I had the answers a minute after shooting it." - Source
11/05/08 - Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS "[One factor is] the ease of writing drivers; Linux drivers are at normally one-third smaller than Windows drivers or other operating system drivers. We have all the examples there, so it's trivial to write a new one if you have new hardware, usually because you can copy the code and go. We maintain them... forever, so the old ones don't disappear and we run on every single processor out there. I mean Linux is 80% of the world's top 500 super computers right now and we're also the number one embedded operating system today. We've got both sides of the market because it's yeah it's pretty amazing. I don't know why, but we're doing something right." / Free Linux Driver Development Network - Yes, that's right, the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. No longer do you have to suffer through all of the different examples in the Linux Device Driver Kit, or pick through the thousands of example drivers in the Linux kernel source tree trying to determine which one is the closest to what you need to do. All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done. In return, you will receive a complete and working Linux driver that is added to the main Linux kernel source tree. The driver will be written by some of the members of the Linux kernel developer community (over 1500 strong and growing). This driver will then be automatically included in all Linux distributions, including the "enterprise" ones. It will be automatically kept up to date and working through all Linux kernel API changes. This driver will work with all of the different CPU types supported by Linux, the largest number of CPU types supported by any operating system ever before in the history of computing. - Source
11/05/08 - Rock Reinforcement: New Technology Makes Excavations Safer One of the biggest challenges facing the mining industry is rock wall failure. Charlie Lis invention could change all that, by making excavations safer. Dynamic Rock Support AS, a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), is commercialising Lis technology. Li has invented a new type of bolt for rock reinforcement. The most common way to protect mines and tunnels from rock fall is to install bolts in the country rock. In highly stressed rock masses, rock reinforcement bolts need to be both deformable yet able to bear high loads to securely anchor the moving rock masses. No other current rock bolt combines these contradictory characteristics nearly as well as Lis solution. The unique anchoring system combined with the ductile nature of the bolts enable them to tolerate high loads and rock deformation without breaking unexpectedly, thus absorbing more energy than conventional rock bolts. - Source
11/05/08 - The Wobble Generator The Internet may be our salvation. Without it Qin Gang of the UK never would have been able to share his nifty little (and patented) invention with me The Batteryless Bicycle Flashing Light System, A Non-Friction Bicycle Dynamo (Generator). Im not saying that this little product that Freelights.co.uk sells globally is a world-changer. But it is one that tinkerers in every corner of the earth can play with, improve upon if they like. (Freelights sells the Batteryless Safety Lights, an experimentation kit, individual parts and components; or find your own supplies elsewhere to experiment with in your basement shop.) Basically this is how the no-friction, no drag, Bicycle Flashing Light System works. (Youll probably need to look in the recesses of your mind for something you learned in high school science class to understand it completely.) Imagine a little plastic can, not unlike the one 35mm film comes in. The can is wrapped in copper wire to create a coil. The copper wire is attached to LED (light emitting diode) lights. Inside the can is a strong magnet. Its just sitting in there waiting for something to happen. The happening happens when another magnet is passed by the plastic can. The passing magnet causes the magnet inside the can to flip north-to-south, south-to-north. As the magnet in the can flips, it induces a small electric current in the coil. (This is how generators or dynamos make electricity, pretty much.) Theres enough juice coming from the coil to make the LEDs flash on and off. In the bicycle version that the company sells, the generator is attached to the frame of the bicycle near the hub of a wheel and the magnets that pass by the generator are taped to the spokes. As the wheel turns the spoke-attached magnets pass close enough to the generator for its internal magnet to flip and generate enough power to flash clusters of LEDs facing fore and aft mounted on the bike. The lights flash for safety. Freelights calls the dynamo a Tumbling Magnet Electrical Generating System. Another nice feature is that there is no electric connection, nor is one necessary, between the generator mounted to the bike frame and magnets mounted on the spokes. - Source
11/05/08 - Nutty inventor brings dreams to life Tran Van Tin, the "nutty" inventor and the director of the ICE Viet Nam Company, has created a number of unique electronic projects, which are assembled in his factory by disabled workers. Tins inventions provide a solution to every-day problems. Hearing shopkeepers complain about fake money inspired him to invent a counterfeit detection device - a light in the shape of a tiny heart. After reading a newspaper article in which international scientists warned that electromagnetic waves emitted from mobile phones can be harmful to the brain, Tin created a protective barrier to be worn on the ear. Seeing that mobile phone batteries often ran out at inconvenient times, he invented a battery charger which fastens onto motorbikes. Tin has invented a wide array of items, including equipment which can conserve 20 per cent of the power used by electrical devices and an electric cat which deters mice and cockroaches. The "cat" emits a frequency of 19.5khz, which is inaudible to most people, but painful to mice. Tins latest invention is a power generator and storage device. "The device can store energy while mains electricity is available. When the electricity goes out, the device will automatically be turned on to provide power for every household electrical appliance, including televisions, fans, lights and computers. The device is special because it can supply power for all household appliances and reserve power at the same time. Thus it can operate for 36 hours," he says. With the knowledge he gained in university, Tin was able to complete his research and invent a number of products, which eventually led him to establish the ICE Viet Nam Company, where his products are assembled by employees with disabilities. "Once, when I was assembling electric equipment, I asked my disabled sister for help. I was surprised that she was eager to help me. Since then I have often shown her how to put together the electrical products and she completes them well. I realised that the work is suitable for the disabled, as they can concentrate and work accurately. So I employ disabled people in my workshop. Many people living far away bring their disabled children here to find a job," says Tin. - Source
11/05/08 - Energy in abundance! 'Sun Tree' - The supply of renewable energy will in future be multifaceted. We will obtain our power from the sun and the wind and hydropower and biogas and tidal power plants. For the only way to ensure that consumers and industry will have a sufficient supply of power in the long run will be to place our bets on as many horses as possible. Entrepreneur Alexander van der Beek invented a real-looking 'sun' tree from plastic which produces electricity. The tree has leaves which produce electricity in three different ways. On top of the leaves are solar cells, whilst the difference in temperature between the top and bottom of the leaves also produces a bit of electricity. And finally, microgenerators in the stalks can generate power from the vibration of the leaves when the wind blows. Tidal power generator - It resembles a huge outboard motor and can be lowered into gushing water. Pieter de Haas is Operations Director of the tidal energy firm Tocardo, which developed the device. "It is a tidal turbine, or tidal stream turbine, which can convert streaming water into electricity. In fact, it is nothing more than an underwater wind turbine." Which also means that you neither hear nor see the turbine - the main disadvantage of windmills. There is always a coming or going tide, which makes tidal energy more dependable than sun or wind energy. And there are tides everywhere, also underwater, so Tocardo's invention can be used anywhere on Earth. Biogas from Waste - he Orgaworld company near Lelystad has had a power station fuelled by biogas for years. Biocel - as the plant is called - produces the gas from all kinds of organic waste, from garden refuse to desserts bought in the supermarket. Director Henk Kaskens explains how the enormous biogas reactors operate. "What we do is remove the oxygen from the reactor. We use the exhaust fumes from the gas turbine to remove the oxygen. We then begin to recycle the seepage, which is the liquid squeezed out of the waste. We heat it up and at the same time heat the reactor. The biogas is then produced spontaneously." Biogas is nothing more than gas produced by warmed-up rotting organic waste. The electricity produced by the Biocel fermentation plant is supplied directly to the main power net. The electricity costs a few cents more than that produced by traditional power plants, but this is reimbursed by the government. The plant will eventually provide electricity to 3,000 households. - Source
11/05/08 - 'Diesel' producing fungus found A tree-living fungus that produces a substance similar to diesel fuel has been discovered in South America. Experts believe Gliocladium roseum could potentially be a completely new source of green energy. The fungus, which lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces hydrocarbon fuel similar to the diesel used to power cars and lorries. Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose directly into the biofuel, dubbed "myco-diesel". Professor Gary Strobel, from Montana State University in the US, said: "G. roseum can make myco-diesel directly from cellulose, the main compound found in plants and paper. This means if the fungus was used to make fuel, a step in the production process could be skipped." Prof Strobel led an investigation into novel fungi in the rainforests of northern Patagonia, which cross the borders of Argentina and Chile. He found that when the diesel fuel fungus was exposed to potentially toxic antibiotics, it reacted defensively by generating volatile gases. "Then when we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives," he said. - Source
11/05/08 - Researchers Explore Hybrid Concentrated Solar Energy System Australian, American and Chinese researchers are exploring the possibility of combing solar thermal and PV on rooftops, a move that could potentially cut the cost of solar energy. The system, which is grid-connected, uses a 2-axis collector that is 80 meters long and has 80 mirrors. Blakers explained that each mirror focuses sunlight on a strip of highly efficient solar cells. The cells are mounted on air-cooled receivers. The system has a rated capacity of 20 kilowatts (kW). Once that system was in place and working properly, Blakers said that the next step for the university was to use the "naturally produced heat in the photovoltaic linear concentrators by developing hybrid photovoltaic thermal technology." To that end, a 300 m² Combined Heat and Power Solar (CHAPS) system was installed on a residential dorm that houses 98 students at ANU in 2005. Blakers said that the "two-in-one" heat and power system is comprised of eight collectors, hot water storage, hydronic in-slab floor heating and gas-fired boosters with a 40-kW inverter that interfaces the system with the grid. The prototype measures 1.7 x 1.5 x 0.2 meters and incorporates seven mirrors that focus sunlight onto receiver tubes. Blakers said that crystalline Si micro PV cells with an efficiency of about 20% under concentrated sunlight will be fitted to the receivers to operate under concentrated x20 - x30 sunlight with water cooling being used to deliver heat to the hot-water tank. He said that heat power output of such a system is typically 3 times larger than its electrical power output. - Source
11/05/08 - 'Near perfect' absorption of sunlight, from all angles A new antireflective coating boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power. An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power. After a silicon surface was treated with Lin's new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability. Lin's new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles. Most surfaces and coatings are designed to absorb light i.e., be antireflective and transmit light i.e., allow the light to pass through it from a specific range of angles. Eyeglass lenses, for example, will absorb and transmit quite a bit of light from a light source directly in front of them, but those same lenses would absorb and transmit considerably less light if the light source were off to the side or on the wearer's periphery. Lin's discovery could antiquate these automated solar arrays, as his antireflective coating absorbs sunlight evenly and equally from all angles. This means that a stationary solar panel treated with the coating would absorb 96.21 percent of sunlight no matter the position of the sun in the sky. So along with significantly better absorption of sunlight, Lin's discovery could also enable a new generation of stationary, more cost-efficient solar arrays. - Source
11/05/08 - Celebration Of High-Speed Photography A digital camera, some fast-moving subject, and a bit of knowledge about how to take the best pictures of moving subjects will launch you on the road to some of the most interesting photographs youve ever taken. Although some blurring can be effective in communicating a sense of high-speed motion, some photographers want the subject to be frozen in time to get some pretty special photographic effects. Below we present over 35 beautiful examples of high-speed photography, which are supposed to provide you with some inspiration of what can be done with high-speed photography. We also showcase some truly stunning slow-motion videos. - Source
11/05/08 - Vacuum Processing for Solar Cells Equipment for making wafer-based silicon solar cells reports throughput not in hundreds, but in thousands of wafers/hour. Equipment for deposition of amorphous silicon must accommodate substrates as large as 5.7 square meters. Though the processes used in solar cell manufacturing appear familiar at first glance, the actual equipment requirements are substantially different. Vacuum processing appears in a different form toward the end of the solar cell assembly process, as wafer-based cells are laminated into the module frame and thin-film panels are encapsulated to protect them from the environment. These processes take place under vacuum in order to make sure that air and water vapor aren't trapped against the cell surfaces. However, curing EVA (ethyl vinyl acetate) outgasses volatile monomers that can attack pump seals and react with pump oil. Standard pumps require oil replacement after as little as 200 hours in this environment, and dry pumps can be damaged if process gases infiltrate the gear box. - Source
11/05/08 - The AeroFeather personal Airship lets you fly w/video Once strapped to a volunteers back the helium filled airship allows him to soar through the air like superman! Can only be flown indoors for fear of being caught up in outdoor winds. Wings are made from nylon cloth spread over a lightweight carbon fiber framework. Ballast is added to compensate for the payload and balloon weight. With a little practice you can reach speeds of up to 7kmp. Direction and spin are controlled by wing motions of the pilot. - Source
11/05/08 - CNN to use hologram technology CNN will use hologram technology to beam three-dimensional images of its field correspondents onto its Election Center set. NBC News will project a U.S. map on the Rockefeller Plaza ice skating rink, where the states will turn blue and red as the votes come in. ABC News will put the results up on three massive screens in Times Square. Anticipating massive viewer interest, the broadcast and cable television networks are pulling out all the stops for Tuesday's election, seeking to outdo one another with technological wizardry and scores of political analysts. / "It's so complicated," Bohrman says. "The crew is basically shooting someone that isn't there." CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There'll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms. - Source
11/05/08 - Portable force field could protect future spaceships The idea is to create a system that would scatter highly charged, ionized particles of nuclear fusion would create a magnetic bubble that could protect spacecraft hurtling through the cosmos. Computer simulations done by a team in Lisbon with scientists at Rutherford Appleton last year showed that theoretically a very much smaller magnetic bubble of about several hundred feet across would be enough to protect a spacecraft, the group said in a statement. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small "hole" in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe. from deadly space weather. Researchers said solar energetic particles, although just part of the cosmic rays spectrum, are of greatest concern because they are the most likely to cause deadly radiation damage to the astronauts. According to the researchers the idea of a portable magnetosphere has been around since the 1960's but it was thought impractical because it was believed that only a very large (like 328,000ft) magnetic bubble could possibly work and the electrical voltage required to protect people would be unworkable, researchers said. - Source
11/05/08 - Spectral particles spook physicsts Unexplained 'ghost particles' are mysteriously appearing inside a US-based high-energy physics experiment. Bloggers and theorists are already lining up explanations that involve unseen particles, hypothetical strings, or modifications of conventional physics. The finding is so controversial that about one-third of the 600-person experiment that detected it are refusing to put their names on the 69-page paper purporting its discovery, unveiled on the arXiv preprint server on 29 October1. Whatever the spectres may be, their effect has been seen in roughly 100,000 events enough to make it more than just a statistical fluke. CDF is designed to hunt for exotic, massive particles rarely seen in nature. Like most high-energy physics experiments, it does not detect these particles directly, but instead watches for evidence of their decay in the showers of lighter particles that make up the debris from its collisions. - Source
11/02/08 - Smart Garage In order for the future to be sustainable, it must be more interconnected than the present. For example, early charge stations will be easiest and most profitable to construct where there are large groups of cars, like in parking garages. This fits very well with models like car-sharing, which serve dense populations. According to MOVE team member Laura Schewel, a Smart Garage car share is a likely follow-up project. "Car shares are a great match for the Smart Garage business proposition: they drive more miles per day (and since this depends on operational savings, that's a big deal) they expose a lot of people to the new technology, and they already have a model that utilizes dedicated parking spots (which could become dedicated charge spots)." "Families with the PHEVs/EVs will be able to power the neighborhood in case of a black-out," Schewel says. "Today, some regions have municipally owned electricity utilities. If you neighborhood has solar panels and some wind, and xEVs, in the long run, one can imagine see micro-utilities at the neighborhood scale. This is a LONG way off but it is a potential outcome." - Source
11/02/08 - Hi-tech ways to turn muck into brass ITI Energy already has plants operating in Turkey and Scotland and is pursuing possibilities in Italy, Germany, Spain, the Greek islands, Thailand, the US and the Caribbean. The invention can turn all sorts of waste that would normally have to be buried in a landfill site into a gas that can be used to fuel an engine and generate electricity. What's more, at 12 metres long by 4 metres wide and less than 11 metres high, the plant developed from the technology by ITI is compact enough to be located where the waste is being generated. "The equipment is designed to be positioned where the waste is and is designed to process the most difficult waste we don't need recyclable materials," says Mr Fordham. ITI's technology can turn a wide range of waste into gas, including domestic waste, paper, books and even currency which has been withdrawn from circulation. A typical plant can process up to 1.5 tonnes of waste an hour, producing 1.9 MW of power more than enough energy to power 1,000 homes but the process can be scaled up to cope with more waste. - Source
11/02/08 - Worlds First Chlorophyll Organic Battery Runs on Any Liquid Professor Chungpin Hovering Liao of National Formosa University in Taiwan has created the worlds first chlorophyll organic battery. The battery can use any liquideven urineto power up. It doesnt take much time to start juicing the battery, either. Within 10 seconds of being doused with liquid, the battery starts providing power. The batterys flexibility does come with a catch: it only produces half the power of a conventional battery . But its power generation capabilities are still formidablethe chlorophyll battery reportedly can store more energy than Japans water-powered fuel cells. Professor Liaos battery also has the low production cost of NT$1 to NT$2 (US$.03 to US$.06). And unlike conventional batteries, it doesnt contain toxic substances. - Source
11/02/08 - Can the Bolt-on Blade Really Boost Gas Mileage? w/video We've all heard about the 100-miles-per-gallon carburetor that "they" don't want you to have, and the scientist whose invention was mysteriously suppressed just as he was about to bring incredibly cheap people's power to the world (think Nikola Tesla). Popular Mechanics tested a bunch of "fuel savers" back in 2005 and concluded that absolutely none of them worked. One even started a fire. These devices use miracle magnets, vortex generators, ionizers and water injection. But the only thing they reduced, PM said, was the cash in your wallet. And this brings us to the latest device, The Blade, which bolts on to the exhaust pipe. Actress Laura Dern says it works. "Having a Blade on my hybrid car allows me to continue driving with the satisfaction that I am lowering my carbon footprint and burning less fuel," she says. The Blade is definitely more credible than most. The company paid for independent testing by the respected Automotive Testing and Development Services (ATDS) in Canada. On a 2004 Honda Civic, the Blade allegedly achieved a 57 percent reduction in hydrocarbons, 14 percent in carbon monoxide, 34 percent in nitrogen oxides and six percent in carbon dioxide (the main global warming gas). And on the highway, the numbers show it achieving a five percent fuel economy improvement. "There's a phenomenon called backsliding. When the spark goes off and the piston fires, there is both an exhaust wave and an energy or sound wave (which is five times faster than the exhaust wave). When the reversion wave bounces out, some of it goes back into the exhaust chamber, affecting fuel economy. The ratio of air to fuel is affected. The Blade compresses the sound wave, with a vacuum effect, so the exhaust is sucked more freely toward the tailpipe. You end up with a cleaner charge." - Source
11/02/08 - Lojack for Laptops - November 2, 2008 This is a recovery system initially designed to find stolen cars. But now theres LoJack for Laptops. If you declare your laptop stolen, it begins reporting its location every 30 minutes, through the Internet. A special feature of this system is that the owner can flag sensitive files. When you identify a laptop as stolen, a signal is sent over the Internet to delete those files. Just before deletion, the files are transmitted to the software companys storage banks, where you can collect them. There are ways to disable Lojack, however. If a thief is knowledgeable, they can enter commands that will nullify the programs ability to call home. If the Lojack software comes pre-installed on a new computer, however, the company says it is nearly impossible to disable. Thats because changes are made to the BIOS settings (the Basic Input/Output System). Of course, if you really know what youre doing, you can replace the BIOS. What happens most often in the real world, however, is what employers call PC drift. The computers not really stolen, they just dont know where it is. Lojack service costs $40 a year and you can get it at LojackForLaptops.com. A premium edition of the software costs $60 and pays the user up to $1,000 if they cant recover the laptop or failed to delete the sensitive information. - Source
11/02/08 - Who you gonna call? The real ghost busters Members of Spectors Investigations say they have not only seen ghosts, but they have been smacked, shaken and scratched by ghosts, and even made one ghost laugh. Video and picture evidence collected during ghost hunts are posted on the group'sWeb site: www.spectorsinvestigations.com. "We want to take the next step in finding more evidence," Shane said. The team is trying to develop new equipment to help it do so, they said. One such invention would allow them to hold an electromagnetic field in place, once detected, they said. The Gearons did not elaborate. - Source
11/02/08 - Making water while the sun shines When John Ward returned to his hometown in Adelaide after a trip to Africa, all he had in mind was an almost impossible dream. In his travels,Ward had noticed that use of impure water killed hundreds of Africans every year. It gave him the impetus to build an economical water purifier. His dream equipment with a low maintenance cost could provide families and villages with safe drinking water. Ward calls his invention a solar water purifier. It is basically a hollow box with a sheet of glass on top of it. The glass allows ultraviolet and infrared rays to penetrate. Ultraviolet rays kill the DNA of the bacteria present in water. Infrared, on the other hand, heats it up," said the retired physicist. Ward claimed that solar purifier is twice as good as other existing water purifiers. The device was tested using water mixed with arsenic, salmonella, anthrax and various other bacteria and germs. It killed them all. The purified water not only met the standards of World Health Organisation, but also of the National American Testing Association," he added. The device can purify up to 50 litres of water a day and required no special maintenance as it used only solar energy. A Melbourne-based company Sunsure Water showed interest in the device and Ward and his partner leased out their patenting rights to them. After sometime, Rotary International wanted to buy the device to distribute it in developing countries. / he Solar Water Purifier is a rectangular shaped unit that contains an array of 32 shallow, square trays interconnected by a series of weaves. The trays are made from a black plastic sheet that is vacuum formed onto an aluminium pattern to reach the desired cell shapes. The panel of cells is covered by a sheet of white-glass and sealed using the surface tensions of water vapour produced in the unit. The undersides of the black plastic trays have been thermally insulated to maximise heat absorption. The unit is framed by an aluminium mount for strength and to keep shadowing to a minimum. It is also fitted with folding legs, so that the entire system is inclined at 12.5º to the horizontal. - Source
11/02/08 - Candidates Duel over Energy Probably the biggest difference is that McCain is more for oil drilling and Obama is more for alternate energy. So their campaigns fight over that. Obama wants to cut way down on oil by putting big federal money into developing alternate sources like solar, wind and clean coal. But the McCain campaign says Obama's plans to use those in a big way depends on technologies still not proven, or in some cases, even developed. As Pfotenhauer put it, "He's for wind, solar, tide. That's pretty much all he's for. And that's like saying you're for, as one of my colleagues put it, 'puppies, kittens and sunshine.'" Ben Lieberman, energy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, thinks it's naïve to put too much faith too soon in wind, solar and other alternatives. "Solar energy, wind energy, these are not new," he said. "They've been 'just around the corner' for almost as long as I've been on this planet, and at a point you have to question whether there are inherent disadvantages with some of these alternative energy sources." McCain says one way the U.S. could avoid much of that economic pain is to commit more to clean, green nuclear power. He proposes building 45 new nuclear plants. Pfotenhauer said of McCain, "He, of course, is someone who comes from the Navy and knows that the Navy has been powering ships with nuclear power for something like 60 years and they've been doing it safely." But the Obama campaign gives short shrift to nuclear power. And Obama energy advisor Holstein said the price tag is way too much for McCain's 45 nuclear plants, ".at about eight to $10 billion each." But Pfotenhauer came right back, arguing that to produce the power of just one nuclear plant, "you would have to have two massive wind farms roughly the size of Manhattan." - Source
11/02/08 - OCTOBER SURPRISE: ALIEN ENDORSES MCCAIN! (too funny) In a shocking reversal with major implications for the U.S. presidential election, political kingmaker, the Alien has switched his endorsement from Barack Obama to John McCain amid furor. Both political camps are buzzing about the implications, as the Alien has correctly predicted the winning president in every election for the past 28 years. Ongoing investigation points to Cindy McCain as being the cause for this historic shift in allegiances. - Source
11/02/08 - Jeers! Hazardous levels of metals found in wines Care for some wine with that heavy metal? Researchers report this week that potentially dangerous levels of heavy metals exist in more than 100 types of red and white wines from a dozen countries. British scientists say the wines (their brands and grape type aren't identified) contain amounts of the industrial metals vanadium, copper and manganese that exceed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) health standards, according to their analysis in Chemistry Central Journal. Wines from three additional countries Argentina, Brazil and Italy didnt contain risky levels of the metals. "It was quite an eye-opener to see these values in a lot of the wines we looked at," says study author Declan Naughton, a professor of biomeolecular science at Kingston University in London. - Source
11/02/08 - Hot-E $140 Computer John and Jeanne Nicholls have developed a line of computers named the Hot-E which theyre hoping to launch early next year. Unlike most computers, the Hot-E doesnt store information on an internal hard drive, instead it lets you access your information which is stored on a remote server. Imagine everyones got their own TV station, John said. You dont need your own TV station. All you need is a TV station somewhere else and a device like the Hot-E to display the information. A Hot-E is like a TV set, you plug in your keyboard, your mouse, your keyboard and your internet connection. The desktop can be running over in America. You get the illusion youre seeing a normal computer. But youre not. Mr Nicholls said his company, ThinLinX, had been inundated with hundreds of requests from potential customers around the world wanting to purchase the Hot-E after a story about his invention appeared in the New York Times. Eventually his interest was piqued with the release of the Linux operating system a competitor of the Microsoft Windows operating system and started to become interest in the concept of cloud computing systems and programs which live on the internet - on which the Hot-E is based. Were hoping to sell it for about US$100. It uses less power. Mr Nicholls said one of the major drawcards of the Hot-E was that it consumes around 3 watts of energy, compared with an average PC which uses 200 watts. Houses will have their media centre in the lounge room, he said. That system will be running windows, can have movies and mp3s stored, a TV tuner. The kids can be in their room and theyll be able to watch TV, movies, play music and surf the net. - Source
11/02/08 - How To Save The World What does an environmentally friendly biodynamic food system capable of feeding everyone actually look like? This film is a blueprint for a post-industrial future. It takes you into the heart of the world's most important renaissance. Modern industrial agriculture is destroying the earth: Desertification, water scarcity, toxic cocktails of agricultural chemicals pervading our food chains, ocean ecosystem collapse, soil erosion and massive loss of soil fertility. Our ecosystems ore overwhelmed. Humanity's increasing demands are exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity. A simple recipe to save the world? One old man and a bucket of cow-dung. - Source
11/02/08 - End of daylight saving time is good for the heart Fall back? Researchers say there's a 5% drop in heart attack deaths after clocks are reset to standard time. But spring forward? That's bad for the pumper. The culprit is probably sleep. Scientists have known that sleep deprivation is bad for the heart -- the body responds by boosting blood pressure, heart rate and the tendency to form dangerous clots -- but they didn't realize a single hour could have a measurable effect. - Source
11/02/08 - Military Investigates Amnesia Beams In the 1980s, researchers found that even low-level exposure to a beam of electrons caused rats to forget what had just happened to them (an effect known as retrograde amnesia the other version, anteretrograde amnesia, is when you can't form new memories). The same effect was also achieved with X-rays. The time factor was not large it only caused memory loss about the previous four seconds but the effect was intriguing. One theory was that the amnesia was a result of the brilliant flash experienced when the electron beam struck the retina. And, indeed, it turned out that it is possible to produce amnesia in rodents using a flash of light: Retrograde amnesia was demonstrated for the 80-, 85-, and 100-V foot-shock test trials. At 40 V the voltage may not have been great enough to be felt by the subject. For groups examined at shock levels above 100 V, the foot shock was so potent that a photoflash was ineffective in producing RA. Our conclusion was that the photoflash was an effective amnesiac until the intensity of the foot shock became more potent than the photoflash; this is consistent with the recency theory generated in serial learning and memory tasks. What's more, a 2003 paper on microwave effects on the nervous system, from a team that includes Navy and Air Force scientists, states that "research with isolated brain tissue has provided new results that do not seem to rely on thermal mechanisms." It is hard to assess the real effect on working memory and other brain functions, they add. "The many exposure parameters such as frequency, orientation, modulation, power density, and duration of exposure make direct comparison of many experiments difficult . It is concluded that the diverse methods and experimental designs as well as lack of replication of many seemingly important studies prevents formation of definite conclusions concerning hazardous nervous system health effects from RF [radio frequency] exposure." - Source
11/02/08 - Scientists Develop New Strategy to Fight Obesity Scientists with The Scripps Research Institute say the antibody catalyst, GHR-11E11, increased the metabolic rate in fasting mice and curbed their eating even after the rodents went 24 hours without food. The antibody counteracts ghrelin, a gastric hormone that promotes weight gain and fat storage through metabolic actions that decrease the breakdown of stored fat for energy as well as energy expenditure itself. The body releases the substance to encourage eating during periods of calorie restriction. - Source
$5 Alt Science MP3s to listen while working/driving/jogging No time to sit back and watch videos? Here are 15 interesting presentations you can download for just $5 each and listen to while driving, working, jogging, etc. An easy way to learn some fascinating new things that you will find of use. Easy, cheap and simple, better than eBooks or Videos. Roughly 50MB per MP3. - Source
15 New Alternative Science DVDs & 15 MP3s An assortment of alternative science videos that provide many insights and inside information from various experimenters. Also MP3s extracted from these DVDs that you can listen to while working or driving. Reference links for these lectures and workshops by Bill Beaty of Amateur Science on the Dark Side of Amateur Science, Peter Lindemann on the World of Free Energy, Norman Wootan on the History of the EV Gray motor, Dan Davidson on Shape Power and Gravity Wave Phenomena, Lee Crock on a Method for Stimulating Energy, Doug Konzen on the Konzen Pulse Motor, George Wiseman on the Water Torch and Jerry Decker on Aether, ZPE and Dielectric Nano Arrays. Your purchase of these products helps support KeelyNet, thanks! - Source to Buy