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08/31/06 - DIY Solar Wheelchair goes and goes
Well, it "keeps going" for an extra 30 minutes, anyway. In a novel, though logical use for solar cell panels, a guy named Bob Triming transformed his wheelchair into one that runs on SOLAR ENERGY. The solar panel gives him an extra half hour of mowing people down on the sidewalk on sunny days, and serves as an umbrella on rainy ones.
08/31/06 - Foods could make Arthritis worse
The production of antibodies to certain foods is "strikingly increased" in the gut of many patients with rheumatoid arthritis, Norwegian researchers report. It may be that hypersensitivity to certain foods leads to a flare-up in the joints. To investigate whether there might be some foundation for this putative association, the team studied samples of blood and intestinal fluids from 14 rheumatoid arthritis patients and 20 healthy "controls". The researchers found that systemic and intestinal immune responses were abnormal in many rheumatoid arthritis patients. The elevated level of food antibodies in gut secretions was "particularly striking," they report in the medical journal Gut. Specifically, the team identified antibodies to components of milk, eggs, pork and fish. Given these findings, continued. Brandtzaeg, "Patients complaining about a relationship between what they eat and the severity of their joint disease should therefore be considered seriously and followed up with regard to avoidance of foodstuffs potentially producing adverse joint reactions." In short, he concluded, there may be physical, immunological explanation for such complaints "rather than a mere psychological basis."08/31/06 - How to build a Glowing Pickle Lamp
(This simple experiment works with all kinds of foods and is the basis for organic LEDs that are changing graphic display technologies. - JWD) You can make a glowing pickle-lamp by jamming power cords into either end of a pickle that's resting atop a non-conducting surface and then plugging it in. No idea whether this will burn your house down, but it may be worth it. Mike sez, "Years ago when I worked at Digital Equipment Corportation, this hilarious 'research paper' from DEC's Western Reseach Lab was widely circulated. Entitled Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems, it details arcing pickles and other assorted vegetables." Update 3: Wayne sez, "I conducted this experiment years ago as my final high school chemistry project, trying to figure out why only one end of the pickle glows. I came to the same conclusions mentioned about the sodium, but was unable to figure out the polarization. Useless-knowledge.com makes reference to this scientific mystery of pickle polarization:" Why does only one end of the pickle light up and glow? Look at the amazing electrical storm jumping through the pickle. (Results are best viewed in a dark room. This is better than Star Wars! Don’t worry the pickle will make all the light you need.) Unplug the pickle; reconnect the wires on the opposite side and it still only glows on one end. There is yet no definitive scientific answer to explain the polarization of a pickle connected to AC current. Update 4: Dan sez, "Years ago, I figured out that if you buy one of those hot dog cookers that runs current through the meat to cook it, you could use it as a (somewhat) safe version of the glowing pickle lamp."
08/31/06 - Exotic debt-trap mortgages about to turn on their owners
It's amazing that banks can get away with offering these "option ARM" mortgages that let people buy way more house than they can afford, and then give them the option of actually making no mortgage payments so that the interest owed is added to the principal, in a cascade of compound-debt that will rapidly mount. The only question I have is whether the banks will be able to cash in on all those repossessed houses after the real-estate tumble, or will prices be so low that they also lose their shirts?08/31/06 - Solar powered Analog Roller
Gareth Branwyn explains how to build this beautiful twin-engine solar-powered robot that rolls around on a pair of hard disk platters. The robot was designed by Zach DeBord who exhibits his elegant mechanical creations here on Flickr. DeBord's bots were all built using a design approach called BEAM (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics). In most BEAM robotics, simple analog circuits are used in lieu of microcontrollers, eliminating the need for programming.
08/31/06 - Scientists discover protein code to regrow hair
In a finding that could help treat an inherited form of baldness, a research team in Manchester claims to have discovered a protein "code" that instructs cells to sprout hair. By sending the code to more cells than usual, the scientists at the University of Manchester say they were able to breed mice with more fur -- a feat that could potentially be replicated in humans. "During human development, skin cells have the ability to turn into other types of cells to form hair follicles, sweat glands, teeth and nails," explained Denis Headon, who led the research. "Which cells are transformed into hair follicles is determined by three proteins that are produced by our genes," he said.08/30/06 - Pagers Alert Patients of Prayers in Their Behalf
Battling a serious illness can leave people feeling helpless, but one man is helping to show patients they are never alone. Phil Busbee is used to praying for others, he's the pastor at the First Baptist Church in San Francisco. When complications from diabetes forced him into the hospital, a pager put him on the receiving end of hundreds of prayers. Phil Busbee, Pastor: "Probably about 30 pages a day." Pastor Phil is benefiting from the prayer pager project. He received the pager while in the hospital and posted his prayer needs on a website. Now family, friends and even strangers page him every time they pray for him. The pages are all numbers. Some are random. other hold meaning. Phil Busbee, Pastor: "They type in 1-2-3, which tells me they're from our church, or they type in their phone number." Best of all, he doesn't have to return a single page. Leukemia survivor Scott Francis launched the program. He knows how much prayer helped him recover. Scott Francis, Prayer Pager Project founder: "A group of people praying for you has a definitive effect on the outcome of your illness. So it helped me through it and I wanted to provide something along the same lines, only with a direct contact to the patient, so that's why I like the idea so much." Phil Busbee, Pastor: "At 2:30 in the morning, the pager started going off. And I was amazed, I was thinking, 'Wow, somebody is up right now praying for me.' That was pretty, pretty important." Bruce Feldstein is an MD. He's also the chaplain at Stanford Hospital and Clinics. He says while most studies about the power of prayer have been inconclusive, he's convinced prayer makes a difference. Bruce Feldstein, M.D., Chaplain: "These kind of positive things do affect the body's immune system so they have an effect. So it's good for the person's spirit. I've seen that directly." For Pastor Phil, the beeps are a vocal reminder he's not alone. Phil Busbee, Pastor: "I realize there are people praying for me that I don't even know."
08/30/06 - Permafrost melt could release up to 500 billion tons of extra CO2
One of the more frightening possibilities is that the permafrost-caused warming could feed on itself in what one scientist called a "vicious cycle": That is, it could trigger the melting of additional ice, which would unleash more greenhouse gases and thus cause more warming, in a self-repeating cycle for no one knows how long. The melting of Siberian permafrost that has been frozen for thousands of years could eject about 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the next century, scientists from Russia, Alaska and Florida report in today's issue of Science. By comparison, at present the atmosphere contains about 700 billion tons of greenhouse gases. An experiment allowed the permafrost to melt in a lab in Gainesville, in which microbes attacked and absorbed the carbon, transforming much of it into carbon dioxide gas. Schurr measured the rate of carbon dioxide emission by shining an infrared beam through it. The estimate of 500 billion tons in extra greenhouse emissions was derived partly from this analysis. Carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas: It accelerates global warming by trapping infrared radiation before it can leave the atmosphere. Fossil fuels, when burned by cars and factories, are major sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide.08/30/06 - Zapped crude oil flows faster through pipes
Zapping thick crude oil with a magnetic or electric field could make it flow more smoothly through pipes. The technique, which reduces the viscosity of the liquid, could make transporting crude through cold underwater pipes easier and cheaper, researchers claim. Since heavy crude is more viscous, it flows more slowly through the pipes, reducing the volume of oil that can be pumped. If it flows too slowly, oil companies try diluting it with gasoline or other solvents, or sometimes heating the oil. But those techniques can be expensive and hard to implement on ocean-based oil rigs. Tao says the viscosity of a suspension is partly the result of the size of the suspended particles. Smaller particles create a fluid that is more viscous than large particles. The two researchers reasoned that if they could get the small particles to clump together, or aggregate, viscosity would go down. First they tested the theory with a suspension of iron nanoparticles in silicon oil. They applied a magnetic field to the suspension, and did indeed observe a reduction in viscosity. Tao says that the magnetic field apparently caused the iron particles to stick together into larger clumps. Once the field was turned off they continued to stick together for several hours, only gradually breaking apart. Tao and his colleague Xiaojun Xu then decided to see what affect magnetic and electric fields would have on the viscosity of crude oil. Crude oil can contain either paraffin, asphalt, or both. The researchers found that a magnetic field reduced the viscosity of paraffin-based crude oil by about 15% when applied at 1.33 Tesla for 50 seconds. The reduction in viscosity lasted for several hours, gradually returning to normal. Tao says the magnetic field seems to have polarised the paraffin particles, causing them to clump together in the same way as the iron particles. The magnetic field did not work on asphalt-based crude oil, however. So Tao and Xu decided to try applying an electric field to this mixture. They applied a powerful electric field to the oil and again saw a reduction in viscosity. Tao believes the particles were similarly polarised. Whatever the process, the particles clumped together before gradually breaking apart over several hours. Tao says that the technique could eventually be useful in oil pipelines. Powerful magnets could be positioned at regular intervals along the pipeline, or electrified grids could run on the inside.
08/30/06 - Firemapping system put on back burner
Terrorism has delayed the launch of a new system for monitoring wild fires in the US, according to NASA engineers. Tighter rules, prompted by heightened fears over the security of flying from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were among "several factors" cited by the NASA researcher in charge of the project for the delay, according to CNet. The system was due to have launched today, but having unmanned aircraft flying around is clearly not on right now and the planes will be grounded until 6 September. The planes will eventually be used to survey wildfire outbreaks, sending real-time data back to the US Forest Service on the spread and temperature of the blazes. The craft will carry NASA sensors capable of discriminating temperature differences as small as half a degree Fahrenheit. This level of sensitivity will be useful when mapping the fires.
08/30/06 - Cayenne pepper, circulation and stopping heart attacks
(I found this page while on another quest...the best part is the suggestion to drink 1 teaspoon of powdered cayenne in hot water to increase circulation and STOP a heart attack, read the entire page for all the benefits and uses. And about keeping heart tissue alive for over 15 years, on just water and cayenne! - JWD) "In 35 years of practice, and working with the people and teaching, I have never on house calls lost one heart attack patient and the reason is, whenever I go in--if they are still breathing--I pour down them a cup of cayenne tea (a teaspoon of cayenne in a cup of hot water, and within minutes they are up and around). This is one of the fastest acting aids we could ever give for the heart, because it feeds that heart immediately. Most hearts are suffering from malnutrition because of processed food we are eating, but here it gets a good powerful dose of real food and it's something that has brought people in time after time. This is something that everyone should know how great it is, because a heart attack can come to your friends or loved ones any time. And even yourself. The warm tea is faster working than tablets, capsules, cold tea, because the warm tea opens up the cell structure--makes it expand and accept the cayenne that much faster, and it goes directly to the heart, through the artery system, and feeds it in powerful food. "08/30/06 - Flag Change
(You can imagine what would happen if someone from the US did this in Mexico? - JWD) "After being at the rally for a while, we noticed that the opposition was getting louder and we watched as they took the American flag off of the flag pole and stepped on it on the ground at the United State Post Office and mounted a Mexican flag and up it went. At this point the police did nothing. Finally, they went over to take it down and they had bottles and rocks thrown at them. They did not attempt to arrest anyone. They were unable to take it down because they cut the wrong line so the flag remained there for the rest of the day."
08/30/06 - Alfred entrepreneurs prove wood can power a vehicle
“Got Wood: Beaver Energy” is the license plate on an Izuzu Trooper owned by Alfred entrepreneurs Larry Shilling and Chip Bean. “It's just a regular gas engine,” Shilling said. “It's how we make our fuel that's special.” That's because it's fueled by none other than a beaver's favorite food - wood. To operate the vehicle a propane lighter ignites a reactor unit, which is a large metal barrel split into an empty bottom and a top containing wood chips. The wood burns upside down and forms a vacuum, much like an oxygen-deficient atmosphere, Shilling said. After that, the gas goes through a hose where it's cooled and filtered. Finally, the heat travels to the engine and operates the motor. During a demonstration, the sound resembled a lawnmower and a camp fire-type smell filled the air. “It's almost half as powerful as gasoline,” Shilling said during a brief drive down State Route 21. The vehicle cruised at the maximum speed at 40 miles per hour. Shilling said the truck may travel 80 miles on a full barrel of wood. The vehicle also emits a small amount of waste from ash. “It pulls the smoke back into the fire as gas,” he said. “It then uses the waste as gas.”
08/29/06 - Pump your gas when its cool to save money
Don’t Pump Gas At Noon: “Hot Gasoline” Costs US Drivers Over $2.3 Billion a Year. The state with the lowest gas temperature, according to federal data, is Minnesota. It has an average fuel temperature of 53 degrees, and its consumers pay $37 million less annually for gas. It would cost each gas station between $2,000 and $3,000 to retrofit pumps (with temperature compensation devices), and as you can guess station owners are not interested in the expense. In fact, in some states like roasting hot Arizona, the practice is perfectly legal. Because gas expands in the heat, most pumps do not adjust for that and serve up hot fuel that ends up being costly hot air to the motorist who pumps it. In Arizona, if you buy in increments of 5,000 gallons you will get an adjusted pump, but that leaves the average motorist out of luck. We Say: Pump your gas at night or when it is coolest, it can’t hurt. And gasoline hysteria is just beginning. Fasten your seatbelts.08/29/06 - Hydrogen peroxide 'cure' can be fatal
Health Canada has issued a warning about hydrogen peroxide ingestion after some American websites claimed it could cure various life-threatening diseases. People should not drink hydrogen peroxide for medicinal purposes because it can cause serious harm or death, Health Canada warns. Hydrogen peroxide is most commonly used as a topical antiseptic, and must not be ingested orally. Hydrogen peroxide preparations "could be really harmful and they could even cause death when they're ingested," said Nada El-Defrawy of Health Canada in Ottawa. It can also cause irritation or ulcers in the stomach and intestines. Several high-strength hydrogen peroxide treatments are authorized for sale in Canada as disinfectants and for dental bleaching, but only for professional use, the department said. People may be making improper assumptions because hydrogen peroxide produces more oxygen, said Michelle Schoffro-Cook, who practises naturopathic medicine. Some research shows that cancer cells cannot survive in a highly oxidized environment.08/29/06 - Using Charged Particles to cool chips
Computer fans could get some relief from charged particles that create a cooling breeze. Researchers have built a tiny silicon-based device that can effectively chill a surface, providing a novel, more effective way to cool microchips. Kronos Advanced Technologies, uses ionized air and an electric field to cool the surface. The researchers cooled a spot on a surface, comprising a couple of square millimeters in area, by 25 degrees Celsius. The voltage being passed through the electrode tip, which sits a couple of millimeters above the collector electrode, can be modified to cool the chip to different temperatures, or to adjust the area that's cooled, says Mamishev. The pump has two basic parts. An electrode tip emits a high voltage that strips electrons from molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the air, ionizing them. These positively charged ions then flow from the tip to a negatively charged collector electrode. As the ions stream to the collector electrode, "they drag the surrounding air with them, creating a net flow of air," explains Stephen Montgomery, a senior systems engineer at Intel who worked on the project.
08/29/06 - Cancer to be treated with Protons
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's new US$125 million (?97 million) Proton Therapy Center is the largest of the nation's four centers that treat cancer by targeting proton beams narrowly on the tumor itself, sparing the healthy tissue that with typical X-ray radiation would be blasted along with the cancer cells. While newer forms of traditional radiation, with the help of computers, also allow doctors to precisely target a tumor, proton therapy allows higher levels of radiation.08/29/06 - Plane Flies on Power of Five Light Bulbs
The largest unmanned aircraft to rely solely on hydrogen fuel has flown successfully during tests. The plane, with a 22-foot-wingspan, is powered by a fuel-cell system that generates 500-watts-equal to five bright light bulbs. “That raises a lot of eyebrows,” said Adam Broughton, a research engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory. “Five hundred watts is plenty of power for a light bulb, but not for the propulsion system of an aircraft this size.” The design and geometry of the aircraft [Photo] and the controlling subsystem technology allowed the feat. Broughton and his colleagues used creative ways to get rid of extra weight on the aircraft, as well as reducing drag. The researchers also miniaturized the components of the aircraft to fit within a smaller framework. For example, they borrowed a hydrogen tank from a paintball gun. The plane flew as high as 12 feet and stayed airborne for up to a minute at a time.
08/29/06 - South Africa: Build More Sugar Mills, Ethanol Expert Says
SA SHOULD build an additional five sugar mills in order to stimulate ethanol production, a representative of Brazilian sugar and ethanol equipment group Dedini said on Friday. Government has identified biofuels as a key industry in its Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (Asgi-SA) because of its potential to create jobs and lessen the country's dependence on oil. Speaking at a biofuel workshop in Johannesburg on Friday, Dedini vice-president Jose Luiz Oliverio said that if the local sugar industry added five more plants to the current 14, it would increase the number of direct jobs from 85000 to 123000. There are about 47000 registered sugar cane growers that annually produce, on average, 22-million tons of sugar cane. Oliverio said SA should add sugar cane to its energy mix. "The total energy content in sugar is more than that in oil," he said.08/29/06 - Do a Google Search on the word 'failure' and look at what comes up first...lol...
08/28/06 - New British biofuel plan beets ethanol
BRITISH drivers are to be offered a new fuel made from crops that will be less harmful to the environment - but there will be no need for them to modify their engines. Sugar beet, grown in East Anglia in eastern England, will be fermented to produce butanol, which will be blended with petrol and sold at more than 1200 petrol stations. Car manufacturers permit drivers to fill up with fuel that contains a maximum of 5 per cent biofuel and 95 per cent ordinary petrol or diesel. This is because of concerns that biofuels can corrode tubes and gaskets in engines. But butanol has a less corrosive effect than other biofuels, allowing suppliers to create a blend that contains only 80 per cent petrol. Butanol also has a much higher energy content than other biofuels. Richard Tarboton, the trust's head of transport, said: "Butanol is a big step forward because motorists won't need to worry about what is going into the tank. They can fill up as normal." British Sugar, which is building Britain's first butanol plant in Norfolk, eastern England, plans to produce 70 million litres of the fuel a year. Butanol is expected to be introduced in all 1250 BP petrol stations by 2010.
08/28/06 - Fishy Bio-Diesel from Vietnam
(Ca Tra is a Vietnamese Catfish. - JWD) At a time when the price of gasoline keeps on increasing, the works carried out at Agifish and the Institute of Agricultural Genetics (IAG) have come into the spotlight. The two organisations have found different ways to produce oil by using cheap, popular local material. Agifish, one of An Giang’s biggest fish exporters, announced recently that the government has already approved its plan to build a plant with an annual capacity of 10 million litres of bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is processed from fat of local catfish (ca tra), using a technology developed by Agifish experts. "A kilo of ca tra fat can turn out a litre of bio-diesel; so I think the huge volume of discarded ca tra fat by local processing firms could help our province reduce its dependence on diesel imports," Ho Xuan Thien, Agifish Production Director, said. Thien revealed that his company has been using bio-diesel to activate pumps and motors at fishing farms in the last few months. Meanwhile, a new kind of gasoline using harvested straw has also been developed and tested at IAG. "Each year, Viet Nam has 31 million tonnes of straw that could produce 10 million tonnes of industrial alcohol. This volume could in turn be processed into 10 million of tonnes of gasoline," IAG Director Tran Duy Quy said in a VietnamNet interview. This miraculous metamorphose is the result of a secret enzyme developed by engineer Le Ngoc Khanh from a species of micro-organism found in Viet Nam. With two grams of this enzyme added to a litre of alcohol, Khanh obtains a solution known as "aleston". Mixed with one liter of A92 gasoline (available on the market), Khanh obtains two litres of gasoline that he calls C95. "One litre of A92 costs VND12,000 and "runs" 120km, while one litre of C95 costs less (VND7,250) and runs more than 120km with 5 times less pollution," Khanh said. Many scientists have already tried to mix gasoline with alcohol; however, they could not reduce the cost of the product because of the necessity of pure alcohol (from 99 per cent of octane) which is very expensive (more than VND40,000/liter). With his enzyme Khanh could turn cheap, popular industrial alcohol (96 per cent of octane) into "aleston" and mix it with A92 gasoline. An IAG Scientific Committee has already accredited Khanh’s invention, which they call "bio-gasoline".08/28/06 - Gyrobike reinvents the training wheel
The Gyrobike uses a flywheel to help turn the bike's front wheel in the direction necessary to stabilize it when the child starts to lose balance. That's not to say a kid won't ever fall, but the invention tries to keep them upright. The company's Web site has video of kids riding bikes equipped with the device. It notes that a spinning flywheel resembles the spinning rims found on cars these days, carrying a much higher factor of cool than training wheels. Kids have even suggested decorations for the wheels, including flashing lights and sound makers.
08/28/06 - The new piracy: how West 'steals' Africa's plants
Swiss and British firms are accused of using the scientific properties of plants from the developing world to make huge profits while giving nothing to the people there. The launch of a new strain of 'trailing' Busy Lizzie by the multinational biotech giant Syngenta is, say campaigners, a classic example of what they have dubbed 'biopiracy'. This term is being increasingly used by environmental groups to describe a new form of 'colonial pillaging' where Western corporations reap large profits by taking out patents on indigenous materials from developing countries and turning them into products such as medicines and cosmetics which can be extremely valuable in western markets. In very few cases are any of the financial benefits shared with the country of origin. British patent taken out by Syngenta for its new floral 'invention' reveals that Spellbound's magical secret comes from a rare African plant, the Impatiens usambarensis. This grows in the unique ecological habitat of the Usambara mountain range in Tanzania, just south of Mount Kilimanjaro. In its patent Syngenta describes this plant as having 'no commercial significance'. 'This appears to be a classic case of biopiracy,' says Alex Wijeratna, a campaigner from ActionAid. 'This is the silent plunder of natural resources from developing countries. Here we have a large multinational taking out a patent on a plant that grows naturally in a part of Africa and claiming it is their invention . Now the company is making a fortune selling it to the mass market, but the Tanzania communities that live in these regions will not receive one penny.'08/28/06 - PML’s In-Wheel Motor, Plug-in Series Hybrid MINI
The QED currently uses four 750 Nm brushless permanent motors in its wheels, a 21 kWh lithium-polymer battery pack and a 250cc two-cylinder, four-stroke engine as the genset. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). The car accelerates from 0-62 mph in less than 5 seconds. The QED uses a 350V, 11 Farad ultracapacitor to discharge the high current for acceleration and to accept the regen power back from braking. This protects the batteries from high current spikes. The driver can specify an all-electric Eco mode in which the engine will not start unless directed by the operator. In the normal operating mode, the engine starts when the battery drops to a 50% state of charge (SOC). A third mode-sport-offers an enhanced performance profile on top of the normal mode.
08/27/06 - Apocalypse cow
Australian scientists are working away quietly at the CSIRO looking for a solution for the greenhouse gas problem. Until now, the spotlight has been on cars, trucks, power stations and factories that burn fossil fuels and spew out gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas. Cow farting has also been fingered. But the good news is that, when it comes to this, we can all breathe a little easier. "Bovine flatulence plays a negligible role in global warming," is the prim assessment of researcher Benoit Leguet. France's 20 million cows account for an astonishing 6.5 per cent of national greenhouse-gas emissions, according to his estimates. Each year, their belches send 26 million tonnes of these gases into the atmosphere. Their faeces - "dejection bovine," to use the poetic-sounding French phrase - account for another 12 million tonnes. Compare that with the 12 million tonnes of gas emitted by French oil refineries, demonised by greenies as climate-killers. Nor is bovine gas just any old gas. It comprises methane and nitrous oxide, which volume-for-volume are 21 and 310 times more effective at trapping solar heat respectively than boring CO2. By itself, methane is to blame for a fifth of the man-made greenhouse effect of the past 200 years. France's cow population, according to the new study, accounts for 80 per cent of emissions from farm animals, with the rest generated by sheep, goats, pigs and fowl. A new paper sketches several ideas for attenuating bovine pollution. Higher-protein fodder or feed as soya can reduce the gastric fermentation that produces these gases, and faecal waste can be put in a closed silo that traps the methane, which can then be burned as a biofuel. On the other side of the world, Australian scientists are trying a pharmaceutical approach. A prototype vaccine against three species of microbe that produce methane in sheep's stomachs reduced methane belches by eight per cent in a 13-hour test. CSIRO scientists believe they can tweak the vaccine so that it combats more of the remaining methane-inducing germs.08/27/06 - Solar Water using a HygroExtractor
Using a solar hybrid technology, the final development of a process that can generate drinking water from the atmosphere will be presented on October 4 and 5, 2006, during a 2-day symposium in Frankfurt that will include speakers from UNO, development aid organizations and banks. The presentation is hoped to encourage global production, attract funding, and be that much closer to providing access to clean drinking water and electricity for half of the billion people who live in Third World countries by 2015. Mr. Dipl-Ing. Ingo Herr, of Schoemberg, Germany, and an Austrian engineer, Leopold Ritter, have developed the Compact Container Unit, designed to produce clean drinking water from the atmosphere using a Hygroextractor. The protected system for production and purifying water with an integrated power station suitable for small villages is named AguaSolara and uses only sources of renewable energy, namely solar radiation and biogas from biomass. It is said to have no running cost to generate drinking water and to realize basic infrastructure by using energy from photovoltaic and biogas.
08/27/06 - Green gizmo converts cars to bio-ethanol
Motorists wishing to make their cars more environmentally friendly can now do so with a gadget no bigger than a matchbox, say its inventor Green Fuels. A small Wiltshire firm with years of expertise in bio-diesel and bio-ethanol, Green Fuels' miniscule converter allows drivers of ordinary petrol cars to convert their motors to run on cleaner, greener fuels. The Fullflex Gold Bi-fuel Manager, a gadget costing around £500, is plugged into the vehicle engine management, linking it to the car's injectors and enabling it to run on bio-ethanol, unleaded petrol or a mixture of the two. James Hygate, Green Fuels' managing director said: "People are becoming more environmentally aware, and this new bio-ethanol equipment means they don't have to modify existing structures in their cars. "In Brazil, 80 per cent of cars run on bio-ethanol and with pumps already appearing at Morrison's supermarket forecourts, the fuel is set to make a big impact." Stronger take-up of bio-ethanol by motorists would also help farmers across Britain, Mr Hygate added, as the fuel can be produced using our country's primary crop: wheat, which farmers often struggle to sell. Some 2,500 litres of bio-ethanol can be produced from just one hectare of wheat, and its natural levels of CO2 are 'fixed' in a closed cycle during the plant's growth, meaning it is a carbon neutral fuel.08/27/06 - The New Era - Options?
This small planet of ours has the physical resources to sustainably support a civilized population of about two billion people. World population now exceeds six billion, which means that we have exceeded the planet's design land/man ratio by more than 200 percent. Having missed the opportunity to implement a cooperative and unified plan for systematic-selective population control, we are now quite clearly past the point of orderly return. Very soon, the fabled four horsemen will ride. Their ride will not be to the apocalyptic end-of-the-world... but the effects of it will bring about the relatively rapid decimation of approximately two-thirds of the planet's population. This is the order and scale of transmutation that is now needed to re-balance our planet's physical economy and begin to form the basis for a healthier and more civilized culture. Following the decimation; after those who remain on the planet have re-adapted to the greater self-reliance and balanced sense of responsibility that will be needed to prevent the same disruptive process from occurring again, we can begin to work together, under a new altruistic leadership, to build those administrative and cultural centers from which we can begin to usher in a greater and nobler new era of light and life. This difficult Transition Process can be expected to take about 10 years.
08/27/06 - Oil-driven energy era coming to end?
“The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered,” Fischer said during the Georgia Bio-energy Conference at the University of Georgia Tifton Campus Conference Center in Tifton, Ga.. The world has been using more oil than it has been producing for the past 20 years, he says. And by the year 2020, the world’s population will have increased its need for energy by 60 percent. "So as we reflect on the energy situation, let’s keep in mind that we’re not at our last drop of oil,” he says. “But we’re getting close.” There are ethical questions in regard to using food crops for fuel, he says. There are trade-offs and “no free lunch.” For example, a typical corn ethanol plant uses six to seven gallons of water to create one gallon of ethanol, he says. If the United States wanted to replace its transportation fuel needs with biofuel, how much land would it take? Sheehan says it would take a billion acres of switchgrass, a plant with many good bioenergy and environmental benefits, given the current state of technology. The United States has only 400 million acres in total farmland now.08/26/06 - Hindu News report of Steorn Inventors
There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient. `We wanted to improve the performance of the wind generators - they were only about 60-70% efficient - so we experimented with certain generator configurations and then one day one of our guys [co-founder Mike Daly] came in and said: `We have a problem. We appear to be getting out more than we're putting in.' In Steorn's theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance - a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy - that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed. Steorn says it has seven patents pending on its technology, though it is difficult to see what can be patented; magnets already exist and so do the 360 degrees of a circle. Yet it is the positioning of the magnets that seems to be at the heart of this ``new'' energy.08/26/06 - Geothermal power - clean, silent electricity from out of the ground
The early use of geothermal was to heat buildings with water that was either already at a usable temperature or needed only minimal extra heating. Now, temperatures are being accessed that are high enough to be used in power generation turbines. Roughly 99 per cent of the Earth’s mass is hotter than 1800 E C and, about three miles down, the temperature reaches several hundred degrees. The optimum way of accessing this energy at the moment is Hot Dry Rock (HDR) or Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) technology. These are referred to as Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) because they go beyond the drilling of a simple well. It has been suggested that there could be sufficient energy to produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity per network and, at these depths, the technology enables geothermal power production virtually anywhere in the world. It is predicted that plants could work over a reservoir for 30 years without experiencing a significant drop in temperature. And this would be available 24 hours a day because it does not rely on variables such as tides, waves, wind or sun.08/26/06 - Russia spins global energy spider's web
Saudi Arabia continues its "Look East" policy of diversifying its markets away from the US. It has concluded a range of important deals in the energy sector with China and India and is steadily moving into closer geopolitical alignment with the rising East. A number of other key Middle Eastern regimes are following suit. By and large Latin America is doing the same, as are Africa and Central Asia. Almost none of the world's oil and gas producers wants to be inordinately dependent on the US market any longer. Additionally, the steady rise of the powerful economies of Asia beckons oil and gas producers toward such lucrative markets that are politically cost-free, meaning they do not attach political demands and seek to interfere in the domestic affairs of the producing regimes, as does the US. In virtually all cases, the interests of the West and of its multinational oil companies and big Western financial institutions are being minimized and/or pushed out as the global trend of nationalization, by one means or another, of the oil-and-gas sector picks up speed. That is occurring in Russia, which has now surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest exporter of oil, in Central Asia, the Middle East and in Latin America. Within virtually all such regimes the lines of separation between the top levels of political leadership and the directorship of key corporations and industries are not only blurred but are being obliterated. The multinational oil companies of the West are being marginalized as a direct result. That is the case in Russia, where in many key areas of industry corporate directors are intimately tied to President Vladimir Putin, having formed a close association with him long before he became president, and many even hold key positions as upper-level Kremlin officials, or as government ministers. Not merely coincidentally, the key corporations the directors of which are so closely allied with Putin are often resources-based and are also those that are state-controlled businesses, with the Russian state holding controlling (51% or more) interests. To varying yet alarming degrees, the resource-rich regimes around the globe are copying the Russian model. Resources-based corporate states with a profound political affinity for one another and a simultaneous collective disdain and even a hatred for US-led unipolar dominance are proliferating around the globe. Resource-rich Russia's mounting global leverage with the world's other producing states and with the powerhouse economies of the East, and its profound political affinity with such producers and key consumer states, far outweighs the influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).08/26/06 - Researchers Fired Up over New Battery
The LEES battery uses nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor. Capacitors store energy as an electrical field, making them more efficient than standard batteries, which get their energy from chemical reactions. Ultracapacitors are capacitor-based storage cells that provide quick, massive bursts of instant energy. They are sometimes used in fuel-cell vehicles to provide an extra burst for accelerating into traffic and climbing hills. However, ultracapacitors need to be much larger than batteries to hold the same charge. The LEES invention would increase the storage capacity of existing commercial ultracapacitors by storing electrical fields at the atomic level. The LEES ultracapacitor has the capacity to overcome this energy limitation by using vertically aligned, single-wall carbon nanotubes -- one thirty-thousandth the diameter of a human hair and 100,000 times as long as they are wide. How does it work? Storage capacity in an ultracapacitor is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes. Today's ultracapacitors use electrodes made of activated carbon, which is extremely porous and therefore has a very large surface area. However, the pores in the carbon are irregular in size and shape, which reduces efficiency. The vertically aligned nanotubes in the LEES ultracapacitor have a regular shape, and a size that is only several atomic diameters in width. The result is a significantly more effective surface area, which equates to significantly increased storage capacity.08/26/06 - Only 20% Of Britons Believe Blair On Terror Threats
Neo-Fascists need to stage real attack to reclaim credibility and obedience. A figure that is both telling and foreboding - that only one fifth of British citizens believe the Blair government is telling the truth on terror alerts - increases the chances of a staged attack to reinforce the notion that Islamo-Fascism is a real danger and not the invention of a ruthless Neo-Fascist government that has all but abolished freedom in the United Kingdom. A Guardian/ICM poll today reveals that just 20% of British voters believe the government is telling the truth about the threat to bomb transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives - meaning 80% of the country do not trust Blair and the war on terror agenda. Blair's re-election itself was carried with a majority of just 33% and since only half of the country actually voted, that means only just above a quarter of British citizens actively support their government. The fact that a significant majority of British citizens are completely distrustful and skeptical of their government's motives coalesces with gradually building anger in Britain over continually increased interest rates, mortgage and loan repayments, energy prices, government taxes, allied with resentment concerning overzealous bureaucratic infringement on personal behavior such as hosepipe bans and water regulation. The government has lost most of its credibility in the arena of terror alerts after the fiasco of the Ricin attack that never was, the non-existent Manchester Utd bomb plot, the artificial Canary Wharf fairytale, the brutal slaying of innocent Brazilian Charles de Menezes, and the botched Forest Gate raid. All the more reason on their part to allow one to 'slip through the net' and stage an event to re-invigorate the flagging war on terror. Using the fear of terror, Blair has presided over the destruction of liberty in Britain and the final act may be another devastating attack to herd the sheep back into their pens and leave the path clear for a Tory takeover and a continuation of the same Neo-Fascist doctrine.08/25/06 - Orbital engine could have eased fuel price pain
The creator of a revolutionary motor says governments remain short-sighted on energy solutions. RALPH Sarich, who built a vast fortune with his revolutionary, fuel-efficient orbital engine, blames governments for the current pain at the petrol pump. From the late 1970s, Sarich had been warning of the inevitability of huge oil costs. "Hence my determination to try and provide a more efficient engine," he tells The Australian. The engine developed by Sarich -- who is ranked 31 on BRW's list of the nation's richest people, with a personal fortune of almost $800million -- is 40 per cent lighter, 60 per cent smaller and 35 per cent more efficient than standard car engines. When it was invented in the 1970s, it seemed to fit the bill for a world worried about oil and earned him a wave of international acclaim. Why it didn't end up in all of our cars remains hotly disputed, but the sophisticated fuel-injection and combustion system was developed for use in two-stroke engines and is used today in boat engines, motorbikes, lawn mowers and some small cars. "Everyone knew, even in the 70s, that the world's major oil source was in the middle of a powder-keg waiting to explode," he says. "Unfortunately, within political circles and industry executives they were at best courteous listeners and at times absolutely dismissive." He says his warnings, except in scientific circles, evoked responses such as "they will find more", "oil is not finite" and "the Middle East has always had conflict". The orbital engine used a single triangular-shaped piston to create five combustion chambers as it orbited inside a single cylinder. Fuel consumption was dramatically reduced through a combination of complex engineering feats involving combustion clouds, gas and thermodynamic controls, and groundbreaking electronics. Some say that, had it been fully embraced, motorists now could be using 20-25 per cent less fuel, a potential saving for families of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars a year in petrol costs.08/25/06 - Sound Unseen Plaster-In-Wall Speakers For Wall, Ceiling
High-power vibrational element flat speakers have made possible totally unseen in-wall or in-ceiling speakers which produce high definition sound with no “visual interference” to room aesthetics. Entertainment systems can now be placed in any room in the home without visible wiring or “technoclutter.” The technology offers improved dispersion characteristics over conventional speakers, making location and listening position far more flexible. The new Amina Technologies' SoundUnseen plaster-in-wall speakers permit homeowners, consumers, decorators, remodelers, specifiers and professional installers to equip high-quality multi-room installations and home theaters without compromising the interior design of modern living spaces. Core element of an Amina Plaster-in-Wall speaker incorporates a specialized strong, lightweight composite material that vibrates in the same way as natural musical instruments, as with the acoustic guitar, violin or piano. The vibrations recreate the diffuse source of sound energy that is emitted in a less directional manner and capable of filling a space more evenly than a conventional speaker. This diffuse source creates a high-definition sound over a very wide area, ensuring that a surround sound or stereophonic sound field can be heard regardless of room size, shape or listening position. Heart of the Amina Plaster In-Wall speaker is its acoustic engine, which can include from one to four (depending on power levels) rare earth, magnet-based, high power vibrational excitation drivers. This allows the Model AIW5 in-wall speaker to handle 80 watts of continuous power, generating 105 db of sound with plaster applied (see specifications below). Amina's AIW range of speakers cope with the most dynamic sounds, recreating the clarity of individual notes produced by the classical guitar, to the impressive effects generated in today's action movies. The speaker's acoustic engine sets up tiny, powerful vibrations in the composite panel material, which are then transferred through the overlaid plaster, paint or wallpaper covering to the front surface of the wall or ceiling. This, in turn, vibrates air molecules at its boundary. These then excite more air molecules further away, sending a diffuse, non-correlated energy sound wave into the room.08/25/06 - Australia To Build 232 Megawatt Wind Farm
The Planning Minister, Rob Hulls, today gave the green light to building Australia's most powerful wind farm at Mt Gellibrand, near Colac, with the capacity to power 133,450 homes a year. "This $380 million, 232-megawatt project will generate more power than any other wind farm in Victoria, and is proof of the Bracks Government's commitment to renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Mr Hulls. The 116-turbine farm will be built across 2550 hectares of predominantly cleared grazing land. The project was not only good for the environment but would generate local jobs and income, with a significant proportion of the farm's $380 million investment expected to be spent in Victoria. "This project is expected to create 110-120 jobs during construction, and 20-25 full-time positions during the life of the wind farm," Mr Hulls said.08/25/06 - The Mystery of Ever-Burning Lamps
Imagine that you find a small burning lamp hidden deep in an ancient vault. This mysterious lamp, which is in perfect preservation, has burned continuously without fuel for the last 2,000 years. What would you think of your remarkable discovery? Most likely you would wonder whether the precious lamp that you are holding in your hands is a magical object, a work of God, or perhaps some evil powers. Could this ancient treasure be a proof of highly advanced technology? Did our ancestors discover the secret of eternal light? Although it might sound amazing, and for some even impossible certain extraordinary findings clearly show that perpetual light was rather common in prehistory. During the Middle Ages a number of ever-burning lamps were discovered in ancient tombs and temples. Based on ancient records we learn that these mysterious objects were found all over the world, in India, China, South America, North America, Egypt Greece, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, France and many other countries. Unfortunately, looters, vandals, and superstitious diggers who feared that these objects possessed supernatural powers destroyed many of the lamps. How were the ancients able to produce lamps, which could burn without fuel for hundreds, and in some cases thousands of years? From whom did our ancestors gain their secret knowledge? Naturally, the subject of perpetual light became quickly a controversy and the opinions among the authorities were divided. Some authors rejected the idea of a never-ending flame, despite the evidence they were confronted with. A small group of more open-minded and enlightened persons confirmed the existence of, if not eternal then at least very long-lasting light.08/25/06 - World fiddles while Planet Burns
Scientific evidence indicates we can combat climate change if the world can achieve substantial reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases (mainly from burning fossil fuels) by the middle of the century. The trouble is that to have much effect on global emissions we need almost all countries - and, certainly, all the big ones - taking part. Without the involvement of the US, China and India, nothing any individual country achieves will make much difference. And the trouble with this is that, while ever the big three aren't on board, the rest of us have an excuse for not getting on with it. The economic pain of achieving lower emissions could be greatly reduced if somebody somewhere could come up with a few technological breakthroughs - say, big improvements in solar power or other renewable energy sources. A particular boon for us would be a relatively cheap way of capturing and storing emissions from the burning of coal. When you think of the amazing technological advances we've seen over the past 200 years, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. People who came up with such inventions would be hugely rewarded.08/24/06 - New device cuts gas engine air pollution
Two U.S. scientists say they've developed a light-weight, relatively inexpensive way of reducing unburned hydrocarbon air pollutants from gasoline engines. Researchers Marcus Ashford and Ronald Matthews of the University of Alabama say when you start your car on a hot summer day, barely 20 percent of the gasoline injected into the engine vaporizes and powers the engine. The rest becomes part of the engine's emissions of unburned hydrocarbon air pollutants. On a cold winter day, they said, the waste and pollution is much worse. Multiply by 230 million cars in the United States and the picture is much, much worse. Their so-called on-board distillation system targets the root cause of such waste: gasoline's relatively low volatility, or ease in changing from a liquid to a gas. High-volatility components are separated from gasoline and stored for use after startup, until the engine and other components warm and become more efficient. The system would add about five pounds to a car's weight and less than $100 to its cost when in full production, the scientists estimate.08/24/06 - Rethink needed on ancient earth oxygen
Scientists may have to rethink accepted theories of how the prehistoric earth's atmosphere developed after new discoveries in ancient sulphur raised serious questions, researchers said on Wednesday. Up to now it has been generally accepted that the earth's atmosphere was devoid of oxygen for some 80 percent of its existence. "The popular model is that there was little oxygen in the earth's atmosphere before about 2.4 billion years ago," said Hiroshi Ohmoto of Pennsylvania State University. But Ohmoto's team has cast doubt on the theory after finding sulphur isotopes, indicating prevalent oxygen, that predate the accepted start of atmospheric oxygenation. Isotopes from two sulphur samples the team analyzed -- one 2.76 billion years old from a lake bed and the other 2.92 billion years old from the sea bed -- did not indicate an oxygen-starved atmosphere. "We analyzed the sulphur composition and could not find the abnormal sulphur isotope ratio (indicating no oxygen)," Ohmoto said. "This is the first time that sediment that old was found to contain no abnormal sulphur isotope ratio." The team concluded that there were two possible explanations -- either that prehistoric atmospheric oxygen levels fluctuated wildly over the millennia, or that sulphur showing no oxygen might have been produced in an oxygenated atmosphere as long ago as 3.8 billion years by violent volcanic activity.08/24/06 - Bracelet maker accused of false claims
The manufacturer of the "ionized" Q-Ray bracelet has been accused in Chicago of false advertising for claiming the product acts as a pain reliever. A Chicago judge is expected to decide this week whether infomercial entrepreneur Andrew Park and his company must pay $87 million and cease claims about the bracelets pain-relieving effects, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday. A Mayo Clinic study published in 2002 found the bracelets did not actually relieve pain, but gave some wearers a placebo effect, which causes patients to feel better because they expect to. The Federal Trade Commission, which brought the suit against QT, has obtained a temporary court order stopping the company from making pain relief claims while the trial is ongoing.08/24/06 - India Switches from Uranium to Thorium
"We need to import uranium only for couple of decades by which time we would be able to build thorium fuelled reactors," Banerjee said after delivering the 22nd lecture in memory of Brahm Prakash, the renowned metallurgist, at the Indian Institute of Science here Monday evening. Bhabha's dream was to eventually produce electricity by utilizing the abundant thorium in India's beach sands. India's thorium accounts for one-third of the total world reserves while its uranium reserves are just enough to generate 10,000 MW - less than one per cent of India's current installed capacity.08/24/06 - Fast-growing trees could take root as future energy source
A tree that can reach 90 feet in six years and be grown as a row crop on fallow farmland could represent a major replacement for fossil fuels. Purdue University researchers are using genetic tools in an effort to design trees that readily and inexpensively can yield the substances needed to produce alternative transportation fuel. "If Indiana wants to support only corn-based ethanol production, we would have to import corn," said Chapple, a biochemist. "What we need is a whole set of plants that are well-adapted to particular growing regions and have high levels of productivity for use in biofuel production." Chapple and Meilan want to genetically modify the hybrid poplar so that lignin will not impede the release of cellulose for degradation into fermentable sugars, which then can be converted to ethanol. The changed lignin also may be useable either in fuel or other products, they said. Currently about 25 percent of the material in plants is the complex molecule lignin, which in its present form could be burned to supply energy for ethanol production, but cannot be transformed into the alternative fuel.
08/23/06 - Chinese Mud Therapy
In China, mud therapy is being used at nursing homes in Anshan, east China's Liaoning province, to help cure age-related illnesses. Consumers enjoy mud therapy at a nursing home in Anshan, east China's Liaoning province. The mineral mud is believed to be able to alleviate pain from rheumatoid arthritis, sequela of traumatisms and peripheral nervous system diseases.08/23/06 - Global water crisis looms larger
One-third of the world’s population is short of water - a situation we were not predicted to arrive at until 2025 - according to a disturbing new report on the state of the world’s water supplies. Squeezing more out of every raindrop that falls on poverty-stricken regions of Africa and Asia is key to the survival of the world’s poorest and most malnourished people, researchers say. Called Insights from the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, it concludes that one-third of the world’s population now suffers water scarcity, a situation that has materialised 20 years sooner than predicted by an assessment five years ago. The reason for the discrepancy is that earlier predictions were based on a country-by-country analysis. The latest figures stem from a more detailed analysis of natural water basins.08/23/06 - Free energy? The Stoern challenge smells...
A few observations: * Placing an advertisement in The Economist is a good idea, because even though it was likely very costly it lends some (false) credibility to the company. * But why resort to placing an ad? The company says it has approached many institutions that have refused to look at the technology, and those scientists who have verified that it works have refused to go on record. Why would they refuse to go on record? Why, like most companies, would they not slowly build consensus in the scientific/research community? Why not write a paper for a respected scientific journal that goes through peer review? Without answering those questions, of course this is going to be viewed as a publicity stunt. * Now, if you consider this a publicly stunt, you have to wonder what can be gained from it? I mean, sure, you create an elaborate hoax on the world, but doesn't that just piss people off and make your company persona non grata with the business and scientific community? Apparently, according to a Web site called Steorn Watch, this company is legitimate and has existed since 2000 -- whatever "legitimate" means. There's got to be some other motive if this is a scam, because pure publicity doesn't make sense. * Finally, like any agnostic who admits there could be a possibility that God exists (just in case), I think the same applies here. Sure, it would be great of this unknown company proves that the laws of physics are garbage and comes up with a technology to save the world's energy and environmental woes, but for now we've got to consider this an elaborate experiment to be watched out of pure curiosity. This screams reality TV, and it would be fascinating to have BBC cameras following around these 12 selected scientists as they work toward disputing or verifying this potentially world-changing claim. And if it does turn out to be a hoax? It would be a bit of a pisser, as I'd rather see all this attention focused on real technologies that have a chance of making real change.08/23/06 - Laser 'tapping' reveals cracks in rail tracks
A machine that "taps" on railroad tracks using laser pulses to check for dangerous internal cracking is being tested by the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). The laser pulses create ultrasonic waves that travel through rails at high speed. This means the device can scan for cracks while being pulled along a rail track at up to 112 kilometres (70 miles) per hour - much faster than existing equipment. The machine identifies microscopic fractures by monitoring the strength of ultrasonic waves passing through a rail. "It will tell you in real time at which position it finds a defect," says Francesco Lanza di Scalea, the UCSD structural engineer in charge of the project. "It automatically flags a problem at a given position, and tells you how deep the defect is." The device consists of platform, about the size of a double bed, on four small rail track wheels. A laser on top of the platform sends short laser pulses down onto one of the tracks below. These pulses vaporise a very small amount of metal, causing superficial scarring to the top of the track. But they also generate ultrasonic waves that propagate lengthwise along the track. A microphone positioned 30 centimetres metres ahead of the laser, and 7 cm above the track, measures the passing wave. An onboard computer then filters out the noise in order to analyse the signal. If the ultrasonic wave passes through a defect hidden inside the track it becomes weaker. Conventional equipment uses ultrasonic transducers that must stay in contact with the rails. This limits the speed of scanning to about 50 km per hour. And, as the wave is normally reflected vertically, harmless flaws on the surface of the track can often mask deeper, more serious ones.08/23/06 - Video Projector on a chip
"Cornell researchers have made a 0.2mm-squared mirror mounted on carbon fibers that can oscillate at 2.5KHz, 'caus[ing] a laser beam to scan across a range of up to 180 degrees.' These can be mounted on a chip, and in combination with lasers, arrays of such mirrors on a chip can be made into a video projector. From the article: ''"It would be an incredibly cheap display," [Cornell grad student Shahyaan] Desai said. And the entire device would be small enough to build into a cell phone to project an image on a wall."' This display is made possible because of the innovative use of carbon fiber instead of silicon in MEMS. Unlike a standard DMD, this type of device would have one mirror per scanline, not one mirror per pixel, allowing the chip to be much smaller."08/22/06 - Reversible Surfactant cheaper way to extract oil from Oilsands
A new way of extracting oil from the ground has the potential to turn the oilsands into a recycling depot for clean water. Researchers at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. have discovered what they describe as an environmentally friendly and inexpensive way to separate water from crude oil once the mixture has been extracted from the sands. "Your water can go through a bit more purification and be tossed in the river," said Philip Jessop, a chemistry professor whose findings were printed Friday in the international journal Science. He said the secret lies in creating a surfactant _or surface active agent, a molecule where one end blends easily with water and another end that doesn't. To extract the oil from the sands, workers currently inject water, carbon dioxide and a surfactant into the ground. Then, just as soap combines oil with water so it can be lifted from human hands, the surfactant creates an oil and water mixture so it can be separated from the dirt. "The only problem they have is they don't turn off," Jessop said, noting workers then have to add extra chemicals to the mixture to get the oil out of the water. Instead, Jessop and his team of researchers created a surfactant which can reverse as easily as breathing. When mixed with carbon dioxide, the compound combines oil and water. Then, when air is bubbled through the mixture, the compound reverses and splits the oil from water. "It's neither expensive or dangerous for workers or the environment," Jessop said. A report last March by the Pembina Institute said the oilsands industry uses 65 per cent of the water taken from the Athabasca River, amounting to nearly 350 million cubic metres of water per year. To create one cubic metre of oil, workers must use 4.5 cubic metres of water. The new compound could be used to renew or reuse that water, Jessop said.
08/22/06 - Treat your inventions as Serious Business
Basically, there are two types of inventor, the person who invents for fun and the person who invents for money. By far the most prolific is the person who invents for fun. This person is constantly thinking up new and fascinating ideas, it's in their blood to do so. The inventor for fun usually ends up thinking of an idea that solves a problem nobody really cares about, or which has already been invented. The person who invents for money on the other hand always knows that the real trick is knowing what to invent. The successful inventor first of all learns about how products are distributed in their chosen market, and what the expected margins are throughout the distribution cycle. TIP: always ask retail sales staff which products are selling really well and which aren't. I've often found retail staff very helpful in also telling me why certain products are selling better than others. Only after identifying an unmet need or an undiscovered niche does the professional inventor set out to invent the actual product. The inventor for fun will often tell you his new idea will sell in the millions "because it appeals to the consumer". The professional inventor however will invent a product that will appeal to the licensee of the invention. Pleasing the consumer is really quite irrelevant, that's the licensee's job. Its pleasing the potential licensee that's the secret. I have found out the hard way that sending out unsolicited letters to names in a trade directory never works, you'll either get no response at all or a polite thanks but no thanks. Even worse is to make the mistake of setting up a website for your invention, all you're doing is exposing your idea to thousands of other inventors who may find your idea the inspiration they need to improve their idea further! The professional inventor understands that nothing but nothing beats a one-on-one meeting with a senior person from the potential licensing company. I emphasise the word 'senior' because in over 20 years of inventing I have never closed a deal other than by meeting with the top senior people of a corporation.08/22/06 - WIFI Blimps
Sometimes, it's not back to the future but forward to the past. A new idea from a former manager at NASA harkens back to the days of blimps and zeppelins. The name of this invention is "Stratellite." The engineer envisions a fleet of unmanned robotic blimps that will act as Wi-Fi portals on the high, hovering at 65,000 feet. The blimp looks familiar, but has a shark-like nose and packs a digital payload that proponents say is more aesthetically pleasing than the monstrous towers that dot the landscape now and will do so even more in the future. The blimps are designed to be aloft for 18 months or more before needing servicing. This is not a new idea, of course, but it is a new era of Wi-Fi options. Stratellite owner Bob Jones, the ex-NASA scientist, thinks that the time is right... again.
08/22/06 - Steorn - Just the latest company to claim Free Energy?
An Irish microgenerator company, Steorn, put a big ad in The Economist this past week challenging "the world's scientists" to test their claims that they've developed a generator which achieves better than 100% efficiency. That's right, infinitely free power. This is not the first company to claim they have figured out a way around the laws of physics. Black Light Power announced they've taken in $50mm in investments earlier this year -- the company seems to be using a catalyst to entice the electrons in hydrogen atoms to drop to a lower energy state (even lower than the ground state...), in the process releasing photons, and they claim that the solution provides enough power to drive the electrolysis necessary to get the hydrogen in the first place with extra to spare (but... where does the catalyst come from?). The WSJ found (note: pdf) some knowledgeable people who took a look and came away impressed, sometimes writing checks. And let's not forget Magnetic Power (and others) and their zero point energy efforts, as well as FuPower's magnet-based technology for which they claim "government laboratory testers comment on their report that no existing physics theory can explain this extraordinary energy-producing phenomenon." (But their website appears to be down, so this link is to a Google cached page).08/22/06 - The latest on EEStor and Feel Good Cars
Sources say EEStor has delayed the date for the testing of its barium titanate powder -- a key ingredient in its ultracapacitor-based energy storage system. The tests, which will make sure the permeativity and purification of the powder is up to snuff and ready for mass production, are now scheduled for September. A third-party lab in Austin that has links with the University of Texas will likely do the testing. In parallel with the lead-up to testing, EEStor is working on the power electronics and setting up a automated production facility. "They plan to go directly from test to production," said a source. "Their noses are just down right now to get where they want to be." Feel Good Cars, which is an investor in EEStor and has a license to sell its energy storage system in the compact car market, is apparently still expecting to receive its first shipments of units in the first quarter of 2007.
08/22/06 - NYC Professor promotes Urban Fish Farms
A mild-tasting fish that was unfamiliar here a few years ago, tilapia is increasingly available in the United States, almost all of it farmed and imported from China and Central and South America. Schreibman hopes to change that. He believes that urban aquaculture _ raising fish in big tanks in places like Brooklyn _ could be the solution to the overfishing of wild populations and provide Americans with jobs and healthy food. ''We're subsidizing everybody in the world to grow fish that we can buy back from them,'' he said. ''It doesn't make any sense to me. We should be creating jobs here.'' Tilapia are a good fish for farming because they are disease resistant and very efficient at converting feed to body mass. And Schreibman believes that New York City, with its countless restaurants and its immigrants from fish-eating parts of the world like Asia, is ripe for aquaculture development. The tanks could be situated ''in a variety of diverse places from warehouses to skyscrapers, from green fields to brown fields,'' he argued in his contribution to a 2005 book, ''Urban Aquaculture.'' The Brooklyn College tanks use a recirculating water system that is controlled for temperature, salinity and other factors. The tilapia are fed fish meal pellets _ except for those on an experimental soy diet. Americans ate about 300 million pounds of tilapia in 2005, making it No. 6 on the list of seafood consumption by weight, just behind catfish. But not everyone's a fan. Top chefs disparage it, and they're not crazy about the idea of growing fish in a tank. ''The problem with tanked fish is it tastes like tanked fish,'' said David Pasternack, the award-winning chef at Esca in Manhattan's theater district. ''There are people that like it, but people also like McDonald's.''08/21/06 - Car Owners to be Notified of Blackboxes in Vehicle
"As a follow-up to this long ago posting, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has passed a resolution requiring car manufacturers to inform buyers if their cars are equipped with Event Data Recorders (EDRs). The new regulation also standardizes what information is to be collected. Car manufacturers must comply with the new regulation beginning in the 2011 model year."08/21/06 - Why Cold reduces pain
Cold wet cloths and mint leaves pressed to the temple have long been used to put a damper on pain. But aside from the general numbing effect that ice can have on nerves, how cooling treatments work has remained a mystery. Some nerve-ends in the skin are known to hold receptors that are sensitive to temperature changes as well as foods frequently described as hot (such as chilli) or cold (such as menthol). One of these receptors, called TRPM8, can help the body to monitor temperatures between about 8 and 12 °C, as well as being activated by menthol-like chemicals, including a super-cooling chemical called icilin. Susan Fleetwood-Walker of the University of Edinburgh, UK, decided to investigate the link between these cold receptors and pain in rats. They first induced chronic pain in their animals by tying a thread around a thigh, and then either injected a very small dose of icilin into the spinal cord or had the rats stand in a shallow bath of the chemical. They then stroked the painful limb and checked the rats' response: those treated with icilin could withstand three times as much pressure.
08/21/06 - Growing Biofuel Crops On Abandoned Industrial Sites
Kurt Thelen, MSU professor of crop and soil sciences, is leading the investigation to examine the possibility that some oilseed crops like soybeans, sunflower and canola, and other crops such as corn and switchgrass, can be grown on abandoned industrial sites for use in ethanol or biodiesel fuel production. “Right now, brownfields don’t grow anything,” Thelen said. “This may seem like a drop in the bucket, but we’re looking at the possibilities of taking land that isn’t productive and using it to both learn and produce.” The project now is a two-acre parcel that is part of a former industrial dump site in Oakland County’s Rose Township. Thelen’s group is looking to determine if crops grown on brownfield sites can produce adequate yields to make them viable for use in biofuel production. The crops also need to produce adequate quantities of seed oil. A secondary objective is to examine whether the growing plants actually contribute to bioremediation, meaning they take up contaminants from the soils, without affecting their quality for use in biofuels. This might make them especially useful to grow on contaminated brownfields.08/21/06 - Who Owns the Waves?
A grand scheme to convert the power of Woolf's "one, two, one, two" into electricity is being developed by the British government and two British energy firms. Scheduled to be operational by 2008, the £20 million ($38 million US) project will anchor 20 sets of turbines, pistons, and pumps 10 miles off the southwest coast, where they will float in the path of the Atlantic swell, capturing energy. The good news is that the "Wave Hub" is predicted to generate 20 megawatts a year - enough to power 7,500 homes, or 3 percent of Cornwall's overall demand, says Matthew Taylor, one of this region's parliamentary backers of the plan. The bad news is developers believe it will reduce the height of waves by more than 10 percent, affecting a 20-mile stretch of beaches from St. Ives to Newquay, a larger Cornwall town considered to be the "surfing capital" of England. "Of course it may reduce wave size," says Mr. Taylor, "but Cornwall has so many fantastic surfing beaches that we can help save the planet and still have enough surfing for everyone." So who owns the waves? Are there enough to go around? And should the thrill of catching a wave in a wet suit override the need to find new, greener ways to generate electricity?
08/21/06 - United Kingdom: Farmers to 'plant' mini wind turbines
Thousands of wind turbines could be "planted" in hedgerows on farmers' land in a new £200m energy scheme. Proven Energy, a Scottish wind turbine manufacturer, claims that the miniature turbines - at 14.9m tall - will be less obtrusive than the much taller, traditional machines. Chief executive Gordon Proven wants to install around half-a-dozen turbines on each of 5,000 farms across the UK. He said that dotting the turbines around the country, rather than concentrating them on high-density farms, would lessen their visual impact. He added that it would be easier to get planning permission for smaller turbines. Each turbine can generate 15kW of electricity, enough to provide electricity for 15 homes. Proven Energy would pay rent to farmers to use the land, which it would recoup by selling the electricity into the grid. Mr Proven declined to say how much rent it would pay farmers. However, he added: "We want to plant the turbines like spring onions. They will become an energy crop - literally. People forget that a few hundred years ago in East Anglia, there used to be 10,000 windmills."08/20/06 - I could be wrong but it looks like Steorn is very close to an invention by Jack Hilden-Brand!!! Check out this post from 11/14/05. Jack showed his devices, (which I have personally tested here in Mexico), at a trade fair where many people and companies saw them. To the best of my understanding, Jack uses bucking magnetic fields and flux redirection, whereas the Steorn claim smacks of the Ecklin device that also used a flux redirecting magnetic shield...thus 'prior art' comes into play (and there are other such patents)...
Here are photos and technical diagrams of Jack Hilden-Brand's original low energy magnetic valve and there is a patent pending that precedes Steorn;11/14/05 - Hilden-Brand High Efficiency Motor
Jack Hilden-Brand wrote, "I had been working on and off on a magnetic holding device before and I figured it would be a good time to continue working on it. Well I experimented with the device for several years and finally got it working the way I wanted it. This device increases the holding power of an electro magnet to four times its original power. (See Emery/Leedskalnin Perpetual Motion Holder) And also provides a way to turn a permanent magnet on or off to any external metal objects. (See Radus Magnetic Boots) After experimenting with this new device I realized that it could also be used to generate power as in a motor. I then spent several weeks building a test device to see if this could be used to power an electric motor. The first motor I built was very small but worked exceptionally well. It produced about 1/16 hp and turned around 6000 rpm. Also this motor proved to be very efficient, using only about 600 ma at 36 vdc. I also noticed with this motor that when the rpm was loaded down to around 500 rpm that the current did not increase much. The amps did not increase much above 1 amp. Now if you compare this to any current dc motor of comparable size, on motor loading the amps jumped up to around 20 amps."
Jack also has an electromagnet version (patent pending) that takes a small amount of power to completely switchoff any magnetic field...I know, because he kindly loaned me BOTH of them to test and they are INCREDIBLE! But don't break into my house cause I sent them back to him! So you can see he is WAY AHEAD of these Steorn people with his motor that I can't say anything about yet, ask him yourself!08/20/06 - Steorn Challenges Scientists to prove Free Energy claim wrong
Dublin-based technology risk management company, Steorn, has challenged the scientific community to prove it wrong. In an advertisement found in the most recent issue of The Economist it has challenged scientists and engineers to test the firm's free-energy technology and publish the findings. The challenge appears real, but is the technology? Steorn states that from all the scientists who accept their challenge, twelve will be invited to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove (or disprove) that Steorn's technology creates free-energy (also known as over-unity). The results will be published worldwide. According to Steorn the technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be scaled to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars. The challenge posted in the 'Economist' is not designed to catch the attention of academicians, scientists and researchers. The choice of this eminent and widely read business publication is clearly gauged to catch the eye of business institutions and potentially -- funders. Patents filed by Steorn could also encounter the skepticism of various patent offices, which will not grant patents for "perpetual motion" machines. So Steorn has not patented their core technology. Rather, they have filed a sequence of patents which describe various aspects of the technology but not its overall effects. One such patent suggests an arrangement of magnets and a magnetic shield on a linear slide to act as a low-energy actuator switch turning the magnetic fields on and off. If verified then this device would be a remarkable achievement. If not, it joins a long list of failed or delayed free-energy devices including other magnetic shield devices and the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (MEG), reportedly still in "engineering development" after many years of burning through funding capital.08/20/06 - Steorn - Low Energy Magnetic Actuator Patent Application
McCarthy; Shaun David - March 30, 2006 - #20060066428 -A low energy magnet actuator allows magnetic fields to be turned on and off using a small amount of energy. The magnetic actuator according to the invention generally includes a base suitable for the support of a plurality of magnets. An actuatable shield is positioned in relation to the plurality of magnets so that it effectively blocks the magnetic field when it is positioned over at least one of the magnets. The magnetic fields of the plurality of magnets interact in a manner that allows low energy actuation of the shield. - A low energy magnet actuator allows magnetic fields to be turned on and off using a small amount of energy. The magnetic actuator according to the invention generally includes a base suitable for the support of a plurality of magnets. An actuatable shield is positioned in relation to the plurality of magnets so that it effectively blocks the magnetic field when it is positioned over at least one of the magnets. The magnetic fields of the plurality of magnets interact in a manner that allows low energy actuation of the shield.
08/20/06 - Comment about Steorn
The more I think about this I am of two minds: 1. These guys really do think they've succeeded in breaking the laws of thermodynamics. 2. Recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy.08/20/06 - Hot Dogs Lead to DNA Mutation
The hot dog is one of America's most recognized dishes. Although some individuals are able to gulp them in the dozens, the hot dog is routinely derided as simply disgusting. Hot dog haters now have an additional armament; researchers at the University of Nebraska determined the unusually high concentration of sodium nitrite in hot dogs is capable of mutating DNA. Sodium nitrite has been linked to dangerous spikes in susceptibilty (sometimes as high as 700%) to pancreatic cancer and leukemia. Essentially, the chemical serves as a catalyst for producing N-nitroso compounds that increase DNA mutations fourfold, leading to cancerous growths in lab animals.08/20/06 - Nuclear power to produce Hydrogen in off-hours
The nuclear industry overall is pushing the whole idea that only a nuclear society can support a hydrogen economy, since you want emission-free power to produce the hydrogen, not coal power. They argue only nuclear can supply enough clean power that can produce the hydrogen necessary to make the paradigm shift toward fuel cell cars and home heating/power systems. But check out this paragraph from the Bruce Power press release: "Hawthorne said there is a direct link between nuclear energy and hydrogen, an emissions-free fuel which could be produced using electricity from nuclear plants during off-peak hours. Following the restart of Bruce A Units 1 and 2, it is estimated the output from Bruce Power alone could produce enough hydrogen to fuel more than half of the vehicles in Ontario if they were powered by hydrogen." For those who don't know, Bruce A Units 1 and 2 together represent 1,500 megawatts of power and they are in the process of being refurbished. It will take a few years. What I want to know is if hydrogen can be produced during off-peak hours using nuclear baseload generation, then why can't we do the same for charging electric cars at night? I keep hearing critics of electric vehicles talk about the lack of capacity on the grid, but given there's a surplus of baseload electricity produced overnight from nuclear generators, why isn't Bruce Power joining an electric vehicle association or trying to push the EV concept, which is within reach today?
08/20/06 - Brazil's Ethanol cars hit 2 Million mark
"Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. Brazil has pioneered the use of ethanol derived from sugar-cane as motor fuel. Ethanol-driven cars have been on sale there for 25 years, but they have been enjoying a revival since flex-fuel models first appeared in March 2003. Just 48,200 flex-fuel cars were sold in Brazil in 2003, but the total had reached 1.2 million by the end of last year and had since topped two million, the Brazilian motor manufacturers' association Anfavea said. "Flex-fuel" cars attract a purchase tax of 14%, while buyers of their exclusively petrol-powered counterparts are charged 16%.08/19/06 - Company claims Generator with over 100% Efficiency
An Ireland-based company called Steorn claims it has a turbine technology that generates more energy than it uses, aka perpetual motion. Check out this video, not for an explanation of how the technology works (because there is no explanation, besides a little animation of a fuzzy green circle dancing around three horseshoe magnets) but for the ways the use a variety of emotional tricks to sucker people into believing in it. (via boingboing.com) / From Steorn website: Steorn is making three claims for its technology: 1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%. 2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts. 3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature). The sum of these claims is that our technology creates free energy.
08/19/06 - New brain cells die without a job to do
When it comes to brainpower they say you either use it or lose it. Now a study in mice suggests that the survival of newly formed adult brain cells depends on the amount of input they receive. Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues infected genetically engineered mice with a virus that stops new brain cells from producing NMDA receptors - proteins that sit on the surface of brain cells and help them communicate with each other. The virus used infects only newly generated cells, leaving other cells untouched. Infected cells that lacked NMDA receptors died sooner than their normal counterparts, suggesting that communication is essential for survival.08/19/06 - Microwave Drill Bores Holes in Concrete and Glass
A new technology developed at Tel Aviv University will make the process of drilling through glass and concrete easier and cleaner. By using microwaves to heat a material to over 2,000 degrees Celsius, it softens it up enough for a rod to be pushed through. In addition to dust-free concrete drilling, the tech is also effective in putting holes in glass without breaking it, not to mention being a pretty sweet upgrade to your standard power drill. The microwave drill can make holes between a millimeter and a centimeter wide, and is significantly cheaper than laser-drilling alternatives. Just be careful to keep the concrete-melting microwave beam away from any body parts you'd like to keep functioning.
08/19/06 - Oil and Water mix and un-mix on demand
(And lets not forget that Gunnerman, some 25 years ago, was mixing gasoline with water as much as 50/50 to run engines. - JWD) Oil and water can for the first time be mixed and separated on demand thanks to a new, reversible surfactant. The liquid molecule could prove invaluable in mitigating the environmental damage caused by oil spills, such as the one currently spreading along the coasts of Lebanon and Syria. Such a chemical could also simplify commercial oil extraction from currently inaccessible deposits, its designers say. And it would prove equally valuable in the food and cosmetics industries, simplifying processes and products which rely on the mixing or separation of oily and watery components. The genius of the new surfactant lies in its reversibility. Unlike existing ones, it can be switched "on" or "off" repeatedly. The switches are very simple too: carbon dioxide and air. “Bubble carbon dioxide through a solution and the surfactant switches on, leading the oil-and-water mix to form an emulsion,” explains Philip Jessop at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, who led the research team that developed the new surfactant. “To switch it off again, you bubble air through it, and the oil and water separate again,” he says. Surfactants must have two ends - a water-repelling hydrophobic bit that binds to the oily substance; and a water-attracting hydrophilic bit, which has an ionic charge that binds to water. An example is a soap or detergent, says Jessop, which enables oily grime to mix with water when you wash. But a mixture held together by soap can only be separated by adding other chemicals such as acids, which are “messy, expensive and hazardous”, he says.08/19/06 - SpaceX, Rocketplane Kistler Win NASA Competition
"Two emerging space companies have won a NASA competition to provide low cost commercial transport to the International Space Station. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is developing its two-stage reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, but it is making changes after the loss of Falcon 1 during its maiden launch. Rocketplane Kistler's K-1 is a two-stage reusable launch vehicle that has been in development for over a decade. Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the largest companies in the aerospace industry and win most NASA contracts."
08/19/06 - Expand The Functionality Of 'My Computer'
If you frequently use the 'My Computer' window, then you should expand the functionality to your liking. You can add Administrative Tools, Printers and Fax Devices, Scheduled Tasks, Network Connections, Recycle Bin, and My Network Places to the window by using this tweak. To do this, follow the next steps... (via lifehacker.com)08/18/06 - Texas Spaceships to land Upright
A spacecraft taking off from a private West Texas spaceport being bankrolled and developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos would take off vertically, but unlike NASA's space shuttle would also land vertically, according to an environmental study that offers a glimpse into the secretive plans. The craft would hit an altitude of about 325,000 feet - or almost 62 miles - before descending and restarting its engine for a "precision vertical powered landing on the landing pad" in sparsely populated Culberson County, about 125 miles east of El Paso. According to Blue Origin's Web site, the company is "developing vehicles and technologies that, over time, will help enable an enduring presence in space." "We are currently working to develop a crewed, suborbital launch system that emphasizes safety and low cost of operations," the Web site says. As many as 10 flight tests lasting as long as a minute and reaching an altitude of about 2,000 feet could occur this year at the site, north of Van Horn on the 165,000-acre Corn Ranch purchased by Bezos. Over the following three years, as many as 25 launches would be made annually, growing in altitude to 325,000 feet and in duration to more than 10 minutes. Commercial flights, a goal of the project, could begin in 2010, according to the timetable in the document, with as many as 52 a year. "The flight rate would depend on market demand," said the document filed with the FAA. Bezos, who spent summers on his grandfather's ranch in South Texas as a child, has talked in the past of building spaceships that can orbit Earth and possibly lead to colonies in space. Construction would cover 223 acres with buildings, launch and landing pads, storage tanks and parking lots, but that's just over 1 percent of the land. New fencing would be needed to enclose the launch site area, 18,600 acres of desert scrubland and grassland now in use as a private wildlife management area. Within that fenced area is the likely landing area if something goes wrong with a flight. "In some rare cases, the vehicles may land outside the fence line," the report says. "However, in nearly all cases, the vehicles will stay within the boundaries of private land controlled by Blue Origin and present no danger to the public." According to the environmental statement, the craft to be launched from West Texas includes one module for propulsion and one "capable of carrying three or more space flight participants to space." The two would be stacked atop one another to form a conical-shaped vehicle about 50 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base.
08/18/06 - Security 'bad news for sex drive'
A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research. Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship. The researchers from Hamburg-Eppendorf University interviewed 530 men and women about their relationships. They found 60% of 30-year-old women wanted sex "often" at the beginning of a relationship, but within four years of the relationship this figure fell to under 50%, and after 20 years it dropped to about 20%. In contrast, they found the proportion of men wanting regular sex remained at between 60-80%, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship."For men, a good reason their sexual motivation to remain constant would be to guard against being cuckolded by another male." But women, he said, have evolved to have a high sex drive when they are initially in a relationship in order to form a "pair bond" with their partner. But, once this bond is sealed a woman's sexual appetite declines, he added.08/18/06 - British researcher says infrasonic wave sounds create ghosts
(Note - back in the 20s and 30s, there were photographs taken of parts of human bodies, heads, hands, arms, etc. next to high power electrical dynamos and within the field of the high density energy field. I don't think anyone ever wrote a book with the photos but I have seen a few of them which I think were in an old Borderland Research newsletter. - JWD) Why do the English happen to witness ghosts more frequently than the residents of other countries? “The ‘dead people’ in this country have more reasons to walk round the corridors and towers of the old castles and mansions because of the strong sea winds blowing swiftly across the British Isles,” says Tandy. “The winds produce the sound waves of a particular range, which until recently researchers have failed to take note of. The people traditionally see the phenomena created by those sound waves as specters,” adds he. The researcher arrived at the conclusion by accident. He brought a rapier to his workplace one day after he saw the ghost in his laboratory. The rapier needed repairing for a competition Tandy was going to participate later that week. He held the rapier in a vice and soon saw it oscillate as if an invisible hand was swinging the rapier back and forth. The researcher was confident that he was witnessing the phenomenon of resonance. It was very quite in the laboratory at the time. Tandy got down to measuring procedures using a number of devices. He was really amazed to find out that a terrible noise and rumbling was, in fact, filling the laboratory at the very moment. But all the sounds were infrasonic i.e. with frequencies below the audible range. The sound waves in the laboratory measured a frequency of 18.98 Hz. It roughly equals the frequency movement of a human eyeball. The wind gusts blowing against the walls of an old tower produce the sound waves within the infrasound range. The sounds can penetrate the thickest walls. When in a tower, one can hear the wind howling and moaning like mad in the corridors. “It’s not a coincidence that the ghosts allegedly walk along the long corridors where drafts fly bouncing over the walls,” says the researcher in proof of his theory.
08/18/06 - Eat peas, sweet corn and broccoli for better vision
Children have long been told that eating carrots will improve their vision, but now researchers say yellow and green vegetables, including peas, sweet corn and broccoli, contain chemicals that may help protect the eyes. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin studied the diets of 1,700 American women aged between 50 and 79 to see if diet affected their chances of developing eye ailments. Each woman was asked to provide details about what she typically ate some 15 years earlier. The researchers found that women under 75 were less likely to develop age related macular degeneration (AMD) if over the 15 years they consistently ate lots of vegetables such as leafy green vegetables, sweet corn, squash, broccoli and peas, reported online edition of Daily Mail. The vegetables contain carotenoids - a powerful biological antioxidant which the scientists say may protect AMD that affects two million Britons and is the leading cause of blindness among people over 50.08/18/06 - Molecules spontaneously form honeycomb network
UC Riverside researchers have discovered a new way in which nature creates complex patterns: the assembly of molecules with no guidance from an outside source. Potential applications of the finding are paints, lubricants, medical implants, and processes where surface-patterning at the scale of molecules is desired. Chemists describe a new mechanism by which complex patterns are generated at the nanoscale - 0.1 to 100 nanometers in size, a nanometer being a billionth of a meter - without any need for expensive processes such as lithography. Anthraquinone molecules form chains that weave themselves into a sheet of hexagons on the copper surface, forming a network similar to chicken wire. The precise shape of the network is governed by a delicate balance between forces of attraction and repulsion operating on the molecules. "The honeycomb pattern that the anthraquinone molecules produce is open, meaning it has big pores, or cavities, enclosed by the hexagonal rings," Pawin said. "Such patterns have never been observed before. Rather, the common belief was that they cannot be generated. But anthraquinone shows that we can use chemistry to engineer molecules that self-assemble into structures with pores that are many times larger than the individual molecules themselves. With judicious engineering of the relation between the strength of the attraction and repulsion, we could tailor film patterns and pore sizes almost at will." Patterning of surfaces is important for many applications. The friction that water or air experience when flowing over a surface crucially depends on the microscopic structure of the surface. Biological cells and tissue grow easily on surfaces of some patterns while rejecting other patterns and completely flat surfaces.
08/18/06 - Lego Kit to Build Better 'Bots
I put together a robot with Lego's new Mindstorms NXT kit, set it on the kitchen floor, and watched it trundle forward on its rubber wheels till it sensed an obstacle (a cabinet). It backed up, swung left, then proceeded on its new course, till it sensed the next impediment. ''It's like a little man!'' said my girlfriend. That's the charm of robotics _ seeing something of ourselves, however basic, in an inanimate object. Most robot toys, however, are designed to do only one or a couple of things, and get boring quickly. Their charm often doesn't outlive the first set of batteries. The Lego Mindstorms kit, which first appeared in 1998, is different. It lets you design and build a wide variety of robots. Enthusiasts, many of them adults, have used it to build robots that sort Lego bricks by color, dispense soft drinks, or climb stairs. One Dane even turned it into a low-resolution scanner that took 3 to 4 hours to scan a CD cover. The latest version of Mindstorms, which will appear in stores Tuesday priced at $249.99, is a complete revamp that makes it easier to build a wider variety of mechanical friends.08/18/06 - Revolutionary Toilet promises to save billions of litres of water
The Propelair WC has been designed and a prototype built by Phoenix Product Development Limited at the university's Knowledge Dock Business Centre. It uses a displaced air flushing system that requires less than 1.5 litres of water for a flush - a sixth of the nine litres used in an average UK toilet. The new design was tested during a six-month trial at the Water Research Centre in Swindon. Results show that if the toilet was installed in every house in the UK, 1.85 billion litres of water would be saved each day and the country's water needs cut by as much as ten per cent.08/17/06 - Energy from Ceramics
Tiny power sources are put together from hundreds of filigree parts: “That makes them complicated to develop and expensive to manufacture.” The researcher and his colleagues are therefore pursuing a completely new approach, producing fuel cells from a new type of ceramic film called LTCC - Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic. The material has been in use in the chip industry for some time as a substrate for microelectronic components. The Fraunhofer researchers have successfully developed cost-effective ways of integrating additional “non-electronic functional elements” into the ceramics. Their task is facilitated by a special feature of the material: Structures can be applied not only to the surface of the ceramic, but also to the inside. The micro fuel cells are criss-crossed with tiny channels that transport hydrogen or fluids. They are simple and cheap to produce, says Stelter: “We can produce a fuel cell out of LTCC in one go. Not only is the process economical - it is reliable as well.” A further advantage is that the LTCC fuel cell can run on various types of fuel - mainly hydrogen and methanol, but also less conventional fuels such as formic acid. “Formic acid is an excellent power source, but it corrodes ordinary fuel cell materials”, says Stelter. The ceramic material, in contrast, is resistant to the acid.
08/17/06 - 10,000 Rain Gardens
In cities, stormwater can be a real problem. Impermeable surfaces prevent absorption of heavy rains and melted snow, leading to overflowing storm drains and flooding. One solution is the intoduction of more greenery in urban areas; planting trees is one way to achieve this, and increasingly, municipalities have also been installing rain gardens as a great way to both capture rain water and beautify the cityscape. Rain gardens are shallow depressions planted with native vegetation that can capture, drain and filter excess storm water in a short period of time. In Kansas City, Mayor Kay Barnes has started a regional, voluntary initiative called 10,000 Rain Gardens to engage citizens in a plan to better manage stormwater. The city encourages homeowners, bu
