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“ We learned to be patient
observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the
crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl
ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But
above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its
indomitable spirit. ”
—Tom Brown, Jr., The Tracker
February 28, 2012
Republic Services Inc. expects to
continue increasing the number of compressed natural-gas-powered
trash trucks it operates around the country, a move that
ultimately will help lower transportation costs for the nation´s
second largest trash company.
2012 could
indeed see global investment surpass that for fossil fuels,
crossing an important threshold toward a clean energy future.
For years, the electric vehicle
industry has been eager to build a better electric car battery:
one that extends range while having a longer overall life, is
affordable, quick-charging and safe.
EMP attacks don't kill people and animals directly, but
indirectly they could kill up to 90% of humanity.
If you
think you don't need this protection, get the book:
ONE
SECOND AFTER
Arizona Public Service Company
began testing a new 1.5 megawatt-hour energy storage system that
is the size of a shipping container and can generate the
equivalent power output of 1,200 hybrid cars or 300,000 cell
phone batteries.
Soaring gasoline prices have become a rite of summer in the
21st century.
With predictions of an imminent return to $4 a gallon gas in
much of the nation, will consumers in the market for a new
vehicle again take a look at hybrids and all-electric plug-ins?
Manufacturers sure hope so.
Plans are in the works to make the
town more energy-efficient, and thus save money, by placing a
solar panel field at the landfill.
Two of California's largest
utilities are now getting 20% of their energy from renewables as
required by the state's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) - 20%
by 2010.
A Louisiana church was ordered to stop giving away free water
along Mardi Gras parade routes because they did not have the
proper permits.
“We were given a cease and desist order,” said Matt Tipton,
pastor of Hope Church in Metairie, LA. “We had no idea we were
breaking the law.”
The City of Milwaukee's wind
turbine is now up and being prepared for connection to the power
grid, after contractors completed the installation of the
turbine's blades Wednesday.
Macpherson Energy Co. and DTE
Energy Services (DTEES) said the 49.5 MW Mt. Poso cogeneration
plant has been completely converted to run 100 percent biomass
fuel instead of coal, and is successfully delivering its full
capacity of 44 MW of energy to the California grid.
The clean energy industry is
dynamic and evolving, as the future of energy in the United
States continues to be a topic of intense focus, particularly in
this election year. However, according to a new survey from
Pike Research, consumer support for clean
energy concepts – ranging from renewable energy to alternative
fuel vehicles to smart grid technologies – has declined
significantly between 2009 and 2011.
The Department of Homeland Security
frets deeply about the security of nuclear power plants but its
solutions, as government solutions are wont to be, tend to be
unconvincing. A Florida nuclear power plant appears to have
stumbled on a security measure that is green, so cheap it's
practically free and likely to be bitingly effective.
My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school," he
said.
Officials told the newspaper the move was necessary to ensure
there were no guns accessible by children in the family's home.
They also said comments by Sansone's daughter, Neaveh, that the
man holding the gun in the picture was her dad and "he uses it
to shoot bad guys and monsters," was concerning.
The FDA reign of terror against family farms who are serving
the needs of private buying clubs is culminating in one
Wisconsin farmer facing federal charges. Citizens deserve the
freedom to choose, and are staging an event in support of this
principled farmer, Vernon Hershberger. He is being dealt with
unjustly, and is standing strong with the support of the
families he serves.
The energy market in Germany will see dramatic changes during
the next few years. With the nuclear energy capacity halved, the
landscape to 2020 will look very different with renewable energy
to account for 36 percent of electricity generated.
The Dog River Clearwater Revival
environmental group plans to sue the city of Mobile, Ala., and
the Alabama Department of Environmental Management because the
river fills with garbage whenever it rains.
It is hard to frame the magnitude
of disruption now descending on the world of energy.
In a
few years, half of the consumers of America will have new
digital eyes installed on their homes in the form of smart
meters that will peer closely at their use of energy. Energy
companies will have a flood of information that will disrupt the
way they normally conduct business in a way it never has before.
During our school days, the kids
who stayed late in the library or the science labs were often
sneered at. It’s not much different today, although it now
depends on which side of the political aisle one sits. At issue
are those who have devoted their lives to study of climate
science.
I see you are confused about what
constitutes cultural appropriation. I would like to provide you
with resources and information on the subject so that you can
better understand what our concerns are.
The war of words between Iran,
Israel, and the West reached fever pitch this week, likely
ending hopes for a diplomatic solution to the high-stakes
standoff. Isolated and on the ropes, Tehran is antipathetic
toward any kind of concessions and seems bent on proving its
willingness to employ hostile measures to defy its critics. The
question remains: How far will Tehran go to make its point?
Israeli officials say they won't
warn the United States if they decide to launch a pre-emptive
strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S.
intelligence official familiar with the discussions.
"Is the emergence of shale gas a
positive or negative development with respect to
sustainability?" This was one of the most interesting questions
discussed on one of the panels at KPMG's Global Summit last week
in New York. Given the growth of both interest and dispute
around shale gas, is shale gas is a bridge to a sustainable
future or a bridge to nowhere?
Americans’ intake of sweetened
drinks — chief among them, soda — has more than tripled in the
last 40 years, and that consumption is taking its toll on our
health, says Newsmax Health expert Dr. Russell Blaylock.
The indigenous First Nations of
Canada, along with environmentalists and civil society groups,
are gearing up for an epic battle as the oil giant Enbridge
continues to press for its 'Northern Gateway' pipeline that
would transport tar sands oil from Alberta to the coast of
British Columbia. The fight against the Keystone XL has won at
least a temporary victory in the United States, but its Canadian
counterpart, despite vocal opposition by environmentalists and
community members along its westward route, has been largely
championed by the ruling conservative government in Ottawa.
It starts at home. We can critique
the government all we want, but if we don't start practicing
what we preach in our own lives and on the small scale, how will
it ever translate into true change? You may not be able to
reform the world in a day or even a year, but you can start with
yourself and your home.
Japan faces a dilemma. It has to
balance its changed energy needs in the aftermath of the
Fukushima disaster with the more urgent matter of cutting its
imports of Iranian crude oil to avoid being shut out of the US
financial system.
While the meltdown crisis in
Fukushima has raised awareness around the world of the dangers
of nuclear power, Lithuania, with its limited natural resources,
appears to have little choice but to rely on atomic energy to
reduce its heavy reliance on natural gas from Russia.
ASU research demonstrates critical value
of continued operations
Arizona stands to lose approximately $18 billion in gross
state product between 2017 and 2044 – including up to 3,400 jobs
each year – unless agreements can be reached to keep the Navajo
Generating Station in northern Arizona operating beyond 2019,
according to a study prepared for Salt River Project and the
Navajo Nation...
Attorneys and legal experts
following the consolidated federal Macondo damages case in New
Orleans said Sunday that the one-week delay in the start of the
trial that BP and the Plaintiffs Steering Committee announced
jointly earlier in the day likely means that the two sides are
close to an agreement.
A renewable energy venture in the
Puget Sound area of Washington State virtually turns manure into
money. ..In addition to manure, the digester’s “feedstock”
consists of out-of-date soda, beer and wine, as well as “oils,
greases and fats that come out of restaurant traps,” Williams
said.
Homeowners who make energy
efficient upgrades can earn up to $4,000 in rebate through the
Energy Upgrade California program funded by state utilities
customers and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Renewable energy in Michigan is
significantly less expensive than new coal-fired power and will
cost ratepayers far less than originally projected, according to
a new report from the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC)
and a revised renewable energy plan filed in February by
Consumers Energy.
A new approach to stroke treatment
initially developed by Dr. Jeffrey Saver's group at the UCLA
Stroke Center combines the ability to restore circulation and
remove clots using only a single device ... and it's showing
significant promise in trials. In a study comparing the Covidien
Solitaire FR Revascularization Device with the FDA-approved
Merci Retriever, the device successfully and safely treated
roughly 60 percent of stroke patients, compared to roughly 30
percent when the Merci Retriever was used.
President Obama said Thursday that
only a long-term energy strategy can help bring down rising gas
prices, and he mocked Republicans for seeking to turn higher
prices at the pump into an election year issue.
Scientists have created a scanner
that can be attached to a mobile phone, to detect the presence
of E. coli bacteria in liquid samples
Smart meters, which have stirred
controversy, meet health and safety standards, but NV Energy
should offer objecting homeowners an alternative, says a
proposed decision by the state Public Utilities Commission.
First, we learned that almost
anything helps at least a little and is better than nothing.
Second, in order to be protected from a magnetic pulse, the item
needs to be insulated from touching any metal. Third, multiple
layers of protection are most effective.
Ratings firm Standard & Poor's on
Monday declared Greece in "selective default" after banks agreed
to write off more than half of their Greek debt holdings in a
second EU bailout of the country.
one C-class flare, CME , Neither of
these CME's are expected to be geoeffective.The geomagnetic
field ranged from quiet to minor storm levels with an isolated
period of major storm levels at high latitude. The geomagnetic
field is expected to be generally unsettled for the first day
(28 February) as effects from the current disturbance persist.
Predominantly quiet levels are expected for the second and third
days (29 February - 01 March).
A jump in energy prices is jamming
the slow-turning cogs of an economic recovery in the West, but
that may be nothing compared to the economic shock an Israeli
attack on Iran would cause.
State Sen. Buddy Carter revived a bill on Thursday that would
allow private property owners in Georgia to buy power generated
on their own land by a third party.
Such arrangements are routine in other states but prohibited
in Georgia, where the state's main electric supplier, Georgia
Power, opposes them.
Kenny Kingstrom cannot wait to see his energy meter turn the
other way.
That's because he has installed a large solar-power array on
his three-acre property along U.S. Highway 69. Instead of his
meter showing only watts used, it sometimes will turn back,
showing the watts generated.
Sterling Allan reports on his recent trip to South Africa to
visit a company who has developed a 5 kilowatt Fuel Free
Generator that will be available beginning March for their
existing customers. Sterling will be getting a generator to test
and use on his home from that first batch of 200.
Fewer emissions from U.S. power plants in 2009 were the
result of cheaper prices of natural gas, reducing the industry's
reliance on coal, researchers say.
As the United States tumbled into economic recession in that
year, CO2 greenhouse gas emissions also fell by 6.59 percent
relative to 2008, but the recession was not the main cause,
researchers at Harvard University said.
Senator Jon Tester is pushing to extend the wind production
tax credit to keep Montana's wind industry growing and to create
more jobs in the Big Sky State.
Montana's wind power capacity was only a single megawatt in
2004, but now Montana wind energy companies generate nearly 400
megawatts of power.
Analysts and pundits often cite,
correctly or incorrectly, the turmoil in the Middle East, a
strengthening global economy, or speculation as the causes for
the run up in crude oil prices. What is rarely discussed as an
important factor in the rise of the dollar price of oil is the
role played by the dollar itself. Oil is an international
commodity that trades in dollars. The value of the unit of
exchange, in this case the dollar, plays an important role in
determining the “headline” price for the underlying commodity.
The CPI inflation calculator uses
the average Consumer Price Index for a given calendar year. This
data represents changes in prices of all goods and services
purchased for consumption by urban households. This index value
has been calculated every year since 1913. For the current year,
the latest monthly index value is used. In 2008, for example, it
took $21.57 to buy what $1 bought in 1913. Note that in 1920, it
cost $2.02, and declined in 1925 and through the 1930s,
illustrating the effect of the Great Depression, when prices
slumped. Prices did not pass $2 again until 1950.
Thousands of people holding hands
formed a 10-mile human chain encircling central Moscow on Sunday
in the latest protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin.
The toll on coal is continuing.
This time it is coming from federal prosecutors who are zeroing
in on the executives of the former Massey Energy, which owned
the West Virginia mine that exploded and killed 29 people two
years ago.
TransCanada Corporation today
informed the U.S. State Department that what had been the
Cushing, Oklahoma to U.S. Gulf Coast portion of the Keystone XL
pipeline "has its own independent value to the marketplace and
will be constructed as a stand-alone Gulf Coast project."
The cost of repairing and expanding
U.S. drinking water infrastructure will top $1 trillion in the
next 25 years, an expense that likely will be met primarily
through higher water bills and local fees, a groundbreaking
study by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows.
Now that I've finally allowed the
mantra to soak in about eating better and looking for natural
supplements to help me acquire and retain the energy I need,
along comes the federal government with their overreaching laws
attempting to legislate away the freedom I have in choosing
those very supplements my body is craving
Our energy outlook is at a real
watershed. Tremendous change has taken place and we haven't
quite yet understood its significance, but it is a positive
change.
From the fields of California's
Central Valley to the produce aisle of a Michigan Walmart, and
lastly, the kitchen of a Brooklyn Applebee's, McMillan gives a
firsthand account of the long hours, lousy wages and difficult
conditions that are par for the course in these places.
As warnings increase about the
world's dwindling water supply, predictions of a future surplus
come from an unlikely source — drought-stricken Israel. The
optimistic picture was painted by Israel's national water
company, Mekorot..Seawater desalination, according to Mekorot,
will allow Israel to rehabilitate of all its freshwater
reservoirs and enjoy a substantial surplus within eight years.
When Congress failed to include a credit for wind energy
development in the payroll tax cut bill, the ramifications could
be felt around the country, including in central Indiana.
Wind energy proponents are hoping to get the tax credit
extension added to another bill or considered as stand-alone
legislation before the end of the year.
State representatives on Friday
advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should
do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in
the United States.
February 24, 2012
Oil and gas companies have learned
to overcome many offshore difficulties, so what, if anything,
can they bring to the renewable energy table?
Iraq's al-Qaida branch has claimed
responsibility for the latest wave of bombings and other attacks
that killed dozens in Baghdad and across the country in a single
day, raising concerns over the government's ability to provide
security after the U.S. troop pullout.
Apple's Maiden data center already
boasts a white cool-roof and is set to add the largest end
user-owned, onsite solar array in the U.S.
storage system the size of a
shipping container that can generate the equivalent power output
of 1,200 hybrid cars or 300,000 cell phone batteries. The
two-year battery pilot will study how to decrease equipment
stress during high demand and how to provide solar energy after
dark.
After Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters
left Iraq to join the Syrian rebellion, violence has dropped in
Iraq, in some areas by as much as 50 percent in just a few
months.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS), showing fixed mortgage rates moving off their at-
or-near record lows for the first time in three weeks amid
recent data showing the housing market continues to improve.
News Facts
The agriculture industry is trying
to make it a crime to be an undercover investigator at a factory
farm. Goodbye, whistleblowers! Farewell, freedom of speech!
"With some of the most significant
solar resources in the world, Arizona's renewable energy economy
has great potential," Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said
in a statement.
Prices for crystalline-silicon (c-Si) solar photovoltaic (PV)
modules fell below the $1/W mark in January 2012, and in some
cases well below even that, marking the first time that global
average prices have fallen below this milestone, according to
IMS Research.
Abuse of the environment has
created an 'absolutely unprecedented' emergency, say Blue Planet
prizewinners
Celebrated scientists and
development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with
a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by
overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign
technologies.
Arizona Clean Cities Coalitions recognize local National
Partners, school districts, and other Clean Air Champions at the
annual Arizona Clean Cities Legislative Breakfast-Phoenix and
Tucson Clean Cities Coalitions will honor major alternative fuel
users in our state at their annual Legislative Breakfast on
Tuesday, February 28, 2012, on the south lawn of the Arizona
State Capitol.
Low natural gas prices will "for
the first time" lead generators in Texas, Louisiana and the
western US to begin switching from coal, Barclays Capital
analysts are predicting.
If one is pro-life, wouldn’t it be
preferable to prevent pregnancy via contraception rather than
force women to have unwanted pregnancies, and then face the
prospect of abortion, either legally or illegally?
"Consumers need to understand and
believe that there is a value in what you are proposing for
them," said Paula Carmody, a consumer regulatory advocate for
the state of Maryland.
The Clean Air Act has a 40-year
track record of cutting dangerous pollution—all while providing
a net economic benefit to the country. The historic mercury and
air toxics standard and soon to be released draft standards that
will reduce carbon from power plants will save lives and
contribute to a much-needed transition to a clean energy
economy.
Earth's clouds got a little lower
-- about one percent on average -- during the first decade of
this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on
NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for
future global climate.
The reality of protecting all electronic equipment against
EMP from a nuclear explosion over our shores is becoming
imminent. We now live in perilous times.
The information to follow on building
"Faraday cages" is timely indeed.
Energy storage is well known in off-grid installations, but
how can energy storage be used as a way of accessing the grid
for connected renewable energy systems?
“The bottom 20 percent of the U.S.
population has never done so poorly, relative to the median,
during the whole postwar period,” Fabrizio Perri and Joe
Steinberg wrote in a paper released Tuesday by the Minneapolis
Fed. “Low-earning households have become, during the course of
the Great Recession, more vulnerable due to large losses in
wealth.”
Western and Arab powers are to push Syria
to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid at an
international conference on Friday aimed at boosting pressure on
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
More than 60 nations are gathering in Tunisia for the crucial
“Friends of Syria” conference, which will also seek to further
isolate Assad’s regime and support the country’s opposition.
Solar power has grown so massively in Germany that the
government now plans to rein in the boom in photovoltaic
installations by cutting generous subsidiaries.
A report from Harvard suggests that
milk from factory farms may be associated with hormone-related
cancers because of the industrial agricultural practice of
milking a cow throughout her pregnancy. The later in pregnancy a
cow is, the more hormones appear in her milk.
Hepatitis C has surpassed HIV as a
killer of U.S. adults, and screening all “baby boomers” could be
one way to stem the problem, according to two new government
studies.
Biofuel production has ratcheted up
to become a major part of America's energy and agricultural
industries. Corn, or maize, is by far the most widely grown crop
to be converted into ethanol. However, the dominance of maize in
the biofuel industry is not without its pitfalls. Now,
researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
have identified a temperate-tropical maize hybrid that can
potentially revolutionize biofuels in this country. The maize
hybrid has the potential to increase ethanol production for each
unit of plant material, and minimize the environmental cost of
biofuel production.
“The demand for freight
transportation has been a boon to both the rolling stock and
intermodal industries” Freight tonnage in December 2011 hit a
13-year high, up 10.5 percent compared to December 2010.
The failure of Libya’s National
Transitional Council to create any real government structure
since taking control of the country last November is
contributing to a breakdown of order in the country and will
complicate upcoming elections. Unless the Council moves quickly
to solidify its authority, Libya could lapse into a group of
warring independent municipalities with no central government.
Or worse.
There is always concern when
something radioactive is released as to what its downwind
effects might be. Certainly there are effects at the actual site
but thousands of miles away? Fallout from the 2011 Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear power facility in Japan was measured in minimal
amounts in precipitation in the United States in about 20
percent of 167 sites sampled in a nationwide study released
today.
Middle East expert Walid Phares
tells Newsmax that the Obama administration is not convinced
that the Iranians pose a serious danger — even as a top Iranian
official declared that his country is prepared to launch a
pre-emptive strike.
My garden is still half-frozen, but
I already know I'll be enjoying a bumper crop of giant
vegetables this fall.
Six nations joined UNEP today in
announcing a new international effort to pursue action to limit
non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. In the wake of the Durban
negotiations that largely deferred action on an international
climate agreement until 2020, the Climate and Clean Air
Coalition to Limit Short-term Pollutants is being initiated to
combat non-CO2 emissions responsible for up to a third of global
warming.
University of Texas at Austin
researchers have developed a method that may speed up the body's
ability to grow new blood vessels
Due to the virulence of hepatitis
C, which is greater than HIV, it was thought that developing a
vaccine effective against the different strains around the world
would be impossible.
Energy storage is always an issue,
whether it’s storing enough power to run an electric car or
storing enough solar-generated electricity to supply power while
the sun isn’t shining. KEMA, a global energy consultancy company
headquartered in the Netherlands, recently released a report
analyzing U.S. energy storage over the next five years. In a
nutshell, the market is expected to quadruple.
Energy storage is getting a bump in
the president’s proposed 2013 budget. It’s an extra boost that
the industry says that it needs to get out of the lab and into
market. Just how far off is the concept whereby such stored
power is released when the wind dies down or the sun doesn’t
shine?
The
US Federal Government is making another pitch for business-tax
reform, and within that thrust it is underscoring its support
for renewable energy.
Despite a glowing report from the
governor's Scientific Advisory Panel on Offshore Energy, wind
turbines most likely won't be constructed off the North Carolina
coastline for at least another five years, experts say.
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating
Station achieved its 20th consecutive year as the nation's
largest power producer. The almost 31.3 million megawatt-hours
produced in 2011 is the most ever generated by Palo Verde or by
any other U.S. power plant of any kind.
In 2009, the Police Executive
Research Forum surveyed over 200 local law enforcement agencies
about crime trends. Local police departments said emphatically
that poverty and crime are linked. (No surprise there. History
has shown this to be true again and again.) And the longer the
recession continues, it was suggested, the more crime there will
be.
More than 2,000 angry Afghans
protested outside an American air base on Tuesday after they
learned that copies of the Quran (Koran), the Muslim holy book,
were burned in a pile of garbage at a sprawling U.S. military
base north of Kabul.
The 30 most populous cities in the United States and Canada
are surveyed to gather information about their recycling
programs. They are ranked according to the number of recycling-
and waste-related employees.
Amory Lovins explains his plan for
transforming our energy, transportation and industry sectors
while at the same time growing our economy and cutting dirty
fossil fuels.
Two CMEs were observed overnight,
None of the CMEs are expected to be geoeffective.a chance for a
C-class activity.Solar wind speed at the ACE spacecraft
decreased from approximately 530 km/s to 440 km/sThe geomagnetic
field is expected to continue at mostly quiet conditions for the
forecast period (24 - 26 February).
Current standards in the United States,
where two thirds of people are overweight or obese, advise
people that cutting calories by a certain amount will result in
a slow and steady weight loss over time.
But that advice fails to account for how
the body changes as it slims down...
While drinking red wine is
considered beneficial to health, it must be done in moderation,
she says. Taking resveratrol supplements is especially important
because “significant, scientific data” shows the substance works
to combat aging and serves as a mental stimulant, she says.
While it pains to write this, it has to be done: consumers
are facing higher retail gasoline prices and the pain at the
pump is not likely to ease soon.
The strain on your wallet comes despite ample gasoline
supplies and weak demand in the US, putting the
brakes on the typical economic model of supply and
demand.
Make no mistake: the
Russian-Iranian strategic alliance that I’ve been writing about
for the last several years has deepened to the point where
Moscow is now unequivocally and quite openly backing the mullahs
in Iran. “Russia warned Israel on Wednesday that attacking Iran
would be a disastrous and played down the failure of a U.N.
nuclear agency mission to Tehran, saying there is still a chance
for new talks over the Iranian atomic programme,”
International sanctions aimed at
slashing Iran's main economic lifeline, its oil revenues, could
have an impact on the country's export volumes well beyond the
500,000 b/d of crude that a European Union ban will displace
from July.
Several months from now, miners
could set to work pulling uranium from underground at a mine
about an hour from Flagstaff, over the ardent objections of
some.
“In 1 A.D. the Westhaven community
in Franklin was a lush, expansive environment, filled with
buffalo, deer, fish and clean water. It was also inhabited by a
large primitive tribe, whose name and history were lost long
ago,” writes The Tennessean‘s Helen Meely.
Natural Gas is America’s Domestic
clean foundation fuel for the present and our long-term future.
Natural gas touches nearly every segment of American life.
The United States and five other
countries are in a desperate hunt for 17 precious metals –
metals that are essential to the defense and aerospace
industries and that the West isn’t going to be getting any more
from China.
Splenda Essentials pretend to be
health-supporting, when in fact they seem to have more in common
with pesticides than with sugar.
Gasoline prices could soar as high
as $7 a gallon this summer thanks to supply threats stemming
from Middle East unrest as well as OPEC policy, says real estate
mogul Donald Trump.
As of June 1, 2012, organic
products certified in Europe or in the United States may be sold
as organic in either region under a new partnership agreement
signed last week in Nurember at the BioFach World Organic Fair,
the world's largest trade show for organic products.
U.S. officials are apparently
concerned the group Anonymous may launch a cyberattack against
the country's electrical grid, The Wall Street Journal reported.
...
"Ridiculous! Why should Anonymous
shut off power grid? Makes no sense! They just want to make you
feel afraid," a post on the AnonOps blog said.
The possibility of using hydrogen to fuel cars has often been
discussed, but the access to hydrogen is the challenge. But
could using methane from sewage offer a viable source of fuel
for vehicle fuel cells?
If not older coal technology, then
what is the future of electric generation? That’s the question
that many utilities are asking themselves as well as their
regulators and their customers. And while the most conspicuous
answer is a smooth transition over to natural gas, it is not the
only solution.
Developing a wind farm from concept to an energy-producing
business takes at least five years, according to an expert in
the field.
"There are so many benefits, but it just takes time and every
project has a different issue...
Newly dubbed World Water Monitoring Challenge encourages
greater participation in the program that recorded more than
300,000 participants worldwide in 2011
The symbolic one-candidate
presidential election of Yemeni Vice President Abdul Rab Mansour
al Hadi to formally replace President Ali Abdullah Saleh appears
to have been a success and marks the latest Arab leader to be
ousted by last year’s Arab Spring protests. The new president
faces formidable challenges from the Saleh family, Iranian
influence, and terrorist groups as he tries to restore order and
heal divisions caused by Saleh.
February 21, 2012
Last week, the crude glut in the US
Midwest became the gasoline glut. Consumers may finally benefit.
..But with the same breathtaking fall that saw crude prices
slide, product prices in the Chicago spot market have fallen.
They've fallen a lot.
Studies show that in a crisis,
eight out of ten people will remain passive, relying on someone
else to take charge. One out of ten will panic and endanger
others in the process.
And only one out of the ten will
take swift, decisive action to improve their situation. (When
they do, they immediately increase their chances of survival.)
Are you that one in ten?
I'm not sure which is the more
offensive way to create meat. There's the current "factory farm"
method where masses of hormone-jacked, antibiotics-injected cows
are kept confined in what can only be called bovine
concentration camps while they're fed genetically modified corn,
then slaughtered without compassion and subjected to diabolical
meat-harvesting machinery that turns a cow carcass into
corporate profits. On the other hand, there's the new method
being touted across the media: Test tube hamburgers made
from thin strips of meat grown in a nutrient vat laced with
bovine fetus stem cells. Yumm!
Trillions of dollars have been
stolen from U.S. taxpayers.
You and I, right now, are
seeing the worst plundering of a country's wealth in the history
of civilization, led by an out-of-control Federal Reserve.
Some aviation biofuels could be competitive by 2020, but the
take-up of biofuels by airlines is likely to be modest in the
near term unless governments introduce mandates requiring their
use, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
A growing threat to
our freedom of speech is the attempt to stifle religious
discussion in the name of preventing “defamation of” or “insults
to” religion, especially Islam. Resulting restrictions
represent, in effect, a revival of blasphemy laws.
In 2003, a top executive of the pharmaceutical giant
Glaxo-SmithKline -- worldwide Vice President of genetics --
confessed that "The vast majority of drugs -- more than 90% --
only work in 30 to 50% of the people."
What that means is ... most prescription drugs DON'T work on
most people who take them!
For people who cover the US federal
government and its sprawling bureaucracy for a living, the
roll-out of the president's annual budget request can be a bit
like Christmas and a bit like an Easter-egg hunt. Trawling
through the thousands of pages of budget documents and sitting
through budget briefing can yield charming revelations--and
sometimes horrors--large and small.
From Tunis to Tripoli to Cairo to
Damascus, what seems real one day is no longer the next.
Policymakers in Western capitals agree that Syrian President
Bashar Assad’s suppression of dissent, with a toll of 6,000 dead
so far — and still climbing — makes him the war criminal.
It used to be that when it was cold, you could simply turn up
the heat because energy was cheap.
Now energy is so valuable that a guy can make a living
advising people how to fix their houses so they don't leak so
much heat, or air conditioning.
A surge in U.S. ethanol production
and falling export demand are driving down prices for the
corn-based fuel, curbing producer profits and causing some
plants to shut.
Here are a few inspiring stories of
resistance and victory we've come across in recent weeks
concerning the snowballing campaign to label GMOs in the US...
U.S. employees can expect median base salary increases of
3.0% in 2012, according to recently released Hay Group research.
The median increase of 3.0% is consistent for executives, middle
management, supervisory and clerical positions. This picture is
relatively steady across most industry sectors, and after
factoring in annualized consumer price index growth at 3.0%,
expected employee wage growth is in line with inflation.
he fourth legislative attempt to block the Obama
administration’s ban on new uranium development across 1 million
acres of public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park died
Tuesday night when the House rules committee ruled it out of
order. The amendment was sponsored by the same three Republican
congressmen who sponsored three previous failed anti-Grand
Canyon legislative proposals — Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and Paul
Gosar, all from Arizona.
Obama said more than this about
energy in his State of the Union speech almost a month ago. He
talked about the near-doubling of renewable energy in the three
years of his presidency and plans to develop “clean energy” on
public lands. He stated that he “will not cede” the wind, solar
or advanced battery industries to China or Germany. He supported
programs to reduce energy waste in buildings. And he used the
words “climate change” once, which was one more time than he
used it in his 2011 SOTU speech.
Adding fuel-cell technology to
power plants can nearly double a plant's efficiency and cut
greenhouse-gas emissions, a U.S. materials-science professor
says.
Research suggests that emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas
20 times more potent than CO2, far exceed current estimates for
gas drilling and production.
Glass placed in recycling bins in
certain areas of Oregon isn´t going where residents might
expect.
In Corvallis, glass picked up at the curb by
Allied Waste Services, in trucks designed to carry only glass
for recycling, instead finds its way to the Coffin Butte
Landfill, KATU-Channel 2 in Eugene reported.
With energy prices on the rise,
companies that offer "green" technology got much of the
attention at the annual Eastern Iowa Home Improvement and
Landscaping Show last week.
The tax credit, slated to expire on
Dec. 31, provides 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity
produced from wind turbines. The credit extension didn't make it
into the payroll tax bill, however, and some now fear the credit
won't come before lawmakers again until after November's
election.
On the heels of the riots and buildings burning, I landed in
Athens to visit Defkalion and was able to see a demonstration of
their test set-up for the upcoming seven testing groups. I was
also impressed by the team working with the technology that
could help bring remedy to Greece, Europe, and the world.
Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of immigrants
to the U.S. are not rocket scientists, doctors, or
entrepreneurs. In fact, a study by the Center for Immigration
Studies found that 57% of immigrant households with at least one
child use at least one welfare program. Due to the large share
of immigrants with low levels of education and their resulting
low incomes, many newly arrived immigrants cannot find jobs and
take advantage of cash and food assistance, Medicaid, and public
and subsidized housing benefits that are supposed to be reserved
for low-income Americans.
Unlike the statement in Indian Country Today Media Network’s
“Best Presidents for Indian country” story, it’s a bit easier
identifying the “worst” presidents for Indian country. Five tend
to stand out with the majority of the rest huddled together
after that. Here are our nods to the presidents who did more
harm than good for Native Americans while in office.
The head of France's Total,
Christophe de Margerie, said Monday the company is currently
sourcing crude from Saudi Arabia and other sources to replace
oil it imported from Iran before it halted purchases.
Two Iranian warships sailed through
Egypt's Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea, Iran's
semi-official Mehr news agency reported Saturday, amid
heightened tensions in the region.
Iran's announcement February 19
that it had stopped exporting oil to France and Britain appears
to be a largely symbolic move targeting the two strongest
advocates of the European Union's ban on Iranian oil imports.
A nuclear detonation in the
atmosphere over the country, however, is an E1 pulse, a very
rapid and high density pulse that is generated by the explosive
force of the initial burst. E1 is the EMP variety that fries the
micro-circuitry within computers and other types of electronic
devices.
Italian police said on Friday they
had seized about $6 trillion worth of fake U.S. Treasury bonds
and other securities in Switzerland, and arrested eight Italians
accused of international fraud and other financial crimes.
As large-scale solar development
has spooled out into Southwestern deserts, the modern-day gold
rush is about more than renewable energy. Solar companies and
land speculators are gobbling up scarce private land in the
California deserts, driving prices up 10- to 20-fold, or even
higher
Malaysian communities are asking
the government to stop all 12 planned mega-dam projects in the
state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo and to hold a
referendum on dam construction.
There may be 46.6 tons of medical
waste returning to Charleston, S.C., after Brazil rejected its
importation, but officials in the United States couldn´t confirm
the reports, the Post and Courier reported.
When neighbors in the hills east of
Mexico City saw backhoes ripping up pre-Hispanic relics for a
highway, they did something unexpected in a country where
building projects often bulldoze through ruins: They launched
protests to stop the digging and demanded an accounting of what
is there.
The next hurricane could power your apartment.
Mayor Bloomberg is pushing a proposal to add hundreds of wind
farms on skyscrapers and lots along the city's waterfront,
generating enough renewable energy to power thousands of homes.
Over the course of only 24 hours, more than 793,000 people
from around the country sent a powerful message to Congress:
Don’t build the Keystone XL pipeline. The Center for Biological
Diversity joined more than 40 other environmental groups, led by
350.org, on Monday and Tuesday to galvanize public opposition to
the project. More than 24,700 messages opposing Keystone XL came
from the Center’s supporters.
Groundwater in aquifers on the East
Coast and in the Central U.S. has the highest risk of
contamination from radium, a naturally occurring radioactive
element and known carcinogen.
The natural gas industry has spent
tens of millions of dollars trying to convince consumers that
their product is the proverbial “silver bullet” that will save
them thousands of dollars in home heating costs for years to
come, if only they would switch fuels. But like almost
everything else in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it
probably is—and the fact is, when it comes to natural gas if you
scratch the surface of the industry rhetoric, it becomes
abundantly clear that switching to natural gas is a sucker’s
bet.
In a scene that is playing out all
over the country, police in Boone County, Ky., have noticed an
increase in scrap metal thefts.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has asked the owners of 11 Westinghouse nuclear
reactors in the U.S., including two owned by FirstEnergy in
Shippingport, to analyze whether the nuclear power plants could
overheat in the event of a catastrophic accident.
"We must transform our economy from
one focused on speculating, spending, and borrowing to one
constructed on the solid foundation of educating, innovating,
and building.
President Obama’s fiscal 2013
budget request doubles down on renewable energy amid growing
Republican attacks on the administration’s green agenda.
The budget request, which was sent to Congress Monday,
increases investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency
at the Department of Energy.
The United States cut off all
American funding for UNESCO in November, as required by law,
after the United Nations agency voted to approve the Palestinian
Authority for full membership.
Oil prices jumped to a nine-month
high above $105 a barrel on Monday after Iran said it halted
crude exports to Britain and France in an escalation of a
dispute over the Middle Eastern country's nuclear program.
U.S. gasoline prices jumped 0.9
percent in January, pushing overall consumer prices up at their
fastest clip in four months and offering a reminder of the risks
energy costs could pose to the economic recovery. [while oil
companies sell OUR oil others, artifically decreasing supply to
us..hence higher prices.]
Solar cells manufactured using
special ink printed onto sheets of a supporting material could
lead to new low-cost solar cells, U.S. chemical engineers say.
Banks took back more U.S. homes in
January than in the previous month, the latest sign that
foreclosures are accelerating after slowing sharply last year
while lenders sorted out foreclosure-abuse claims...
But RealtyTrac projects
foreclosures will rise 25 percent this year to 1 million homes.
Last year, lenders took back 804,000 homes.
There were three C-class flares
during the past 24 hours. The geomagnetic field was unsettled to
active with some isolated storm periods at high latitudes.The
geomagnetic field is expected to be unsettled with a chance for
active periods on the first day (21 Feb) due to continued
effects from the high speed stream.
“With some of the most significant
solar resources in the world, Arizona’s renewable energy economy
has great potential,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
said. “This blueprint for Arizona will help focus activity in
the places where it makes the most sense to develop renewable
energy, both for the companies and for the landscape.
The combined global land and ocean
average surface temperature for January 2012 was the 19th
warmest on record at 12.35°C (54.23°F), which is 0.35°C (0.63°F)
above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F).
The margin of error associated with this temperature is +/-
0.08°C (0.14°F).
Theoretically, the shelf-life of
water is indefinite. However, it does depend on the storage
method used and the container used.
"The Ethicist" is a column in
The New York Times Magazine which handles often tricky
questions of morality. It tends not to tsk-tsk, and the
issues tend to feature many shades of grey.
The
butchery of the Assad regime
is horrifying to behold. More than
6,000
Syrians have been brutally murdered by the thugs in Damascus.
The evil Assad government must be brought down and brought to
justice, or face judgment
A natural gas drilling rush is on
in rural North Dakota. And with it, residents are reporting
growing numbers of respiratory ailments, skin lesions, blood
oozing from eyes, and the deaths of livestock and pets.
In order to be truly free, one must
accept boundaries. That sounds like an oxymoron if there ever
was one, doesn’t it? Doesn’t freedom mean that no one can tell
us how to act, think, worship, or live? Aren’t we living in the
“if it feels good, do it” age and hence, have become more
enlightened about freedom than any previous generation?
The U.S. EPA revised its 2010
Municipal Solid Waste Characterization study, saying recycling
of PET containers was 29.2%, not the 21% previously reported.
The merger of the Al-Shabaab
terrorist group with al Qaeda could "diminish support" for
Al-Shabaab within the American Somali community, but it does
raise concerns it could further radicalize those sympathetic to
al-Shabaab's cause, according to law enforcement officials.
Officials from the United States
and Mexico today signed an agreement that eases the way for
exploration and development of oil and natural gas reservoirs
along the United States' and Mexico's maritime boundary in the
Gulf of Mexico.
The United States Senate took the first step in setting aside
a new EPA regulation on America’s coal-fueled electricity
industry that would unnecessarily drive up energy costs for
millions of American families and businesses. Senator James
Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works, filed a joint resolution of
disapproval under the Congressional Review Act regarding the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Utility MACT Rule. EPA also
calls the rule the MATS rule.
Down but not out, the wind industry vows to keep a federal
tax credit alive. Plus, InsideClimate News breaks down Obama's
clean energy budget.
As the fuel cell industry makes the
transition from the R&D stage to full commercialization,
breakout applications are continuing to emerge and business
models and market structures are evolving rapidly. Overall, the
industry continues to expand, and the total size of the global
market – including revenues from fuel cells and from hydrogen
for fuel cells and internal combustion engines (ICEs) – will
reach $785 million in 2012...
February 17, 2012
Aluminum has been added to vaccines
for about 90 years in the belief it spurs the body to produce
disease-fighting antibodies. But aluminum is toxic, and many
common vaccines, including pneumonia, tetanus, and HPV, contain
large doses.
An estimated 100,000 childless adults will lose Arizona
Health Care Cost Containment System coverage this fiscal year.
The state has turned away an untold number since a lower-court
judge allowed the cap to take effect in July.
The high court's decision effectively ends the case, which
centers on a 2000 voter- approved measure that expanded the
AHCCCS population. However, it lets stand an Appeals Court
ruling that effectively said the budget cuts violated the
measure, Proposition 204, but the court couldn't force the
Legislature to obey the law.
Most people don't appreciate the
health, economic, and emotional benefits of a home
garden..They're so busy they never have time to consider the
negative consequences of their modern "drive here, drive there"
lifestyle.
Ohio--The state would pump $1.3
billion a year into renewable energy, such as solar, wind and
geothermal, under a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution.
An anticancer drug, bexarotene,
reverses the physical and cognitive effects of Alzheimer's in
mice in three days
For coffee lovers, the first cup of
the morning is one of life's best aromas. But did you know that
the leftover grounds could eliminate one of the worst smells
around – sewer gas?
The wind industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled
or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit for
wind production failed Thursday in Washington
Egypt will hold its first
presidential elections since Hosni Mubarak's 2011 ouster in May,
a month earlier than previously scheduled, as part of an
accelerated transition to civilian rule demanded by
revolutionary political factions, state news media and officials
said Wednesday.
The budget President Barack Obama
proposed Monday would increase the tax credit for buyers of
electric vehicles -- from the $7,500 maximum to a $10,000
maximum -- and expand the credit to other "advanced technology
vehicles."
The groups said the NRC is
violating federal law by issuing the Vogtle license without
considering important public safety and environmental
implications in the wake of the catastrophic Fukushima accident
in Japan.
Kindergarteners at a Texas
elementary school were sent home with lyrics to a pro-President
Barack Obama song that included such lines as “Barack Obama is
the man” and “He’s our man, yes we can!”
Clay hopes to create a machine with
the magnets that will produce more energy than it takes in, a
sort of perpetual motion machine. He's spent almost $200,000 so
far on unworkable prototypes, but this time he said he's got it
figured out.
Iran is currently participating in
building seven large power plants in various countries, the
director of Iran Power Plant Projects Management Company (MAPNA)
announced on Wednesday.
In defiant swipes at its foes, Iran
said Wednesday it is dramatically closer to mastering the
production of nuclear fuel even as the U.S. weighs tougher
pressures and Tehran's suspected shadow war with Israel brings
probes far beyond the Middle East.
Jordanian energy officials have
reached a final site for the Kingdom's first nuclear reactor as
the country moves ahead with its nuclear power programme.
Armed militias in Libya are
committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to
destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild,
Amnesty International said Thursday.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said Thursday that sanctions against Iran had not yet
worked, adding that Tehran’s nuclear pursuits made it the most
‘irresponsible’ country in the world,
The Obama administration is
weighing options for sharp new cuts to the U.S. nuclear force,
including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of
deployed weapon...
The economic data that portend
recovery are totally and completely inventions of Obama's
political operation. The reality is that no recovery is taking
place!
The massive Ogallala Aquifer, an
ancient underground fresh water lake that made the Plains
cornucopia possible after the 1930s Dust Bowl, is located below
8 states in the High Plains, including Kansas. It stretches, at
depths ranging from a few feet to 1000 feet, from Texas to South
Dakota, and covers roughly 175,000 square miles. Widely
exploited only since the 1940s, it has been depleted at an
alarming rate since, almost entirely for farming. The problem is
causing increasing concern in a number of states including
Oklahoma and Texas.
Dartmouth researchers and others
have previously called attention to the potential for consuming
harmful levels of arsenic via rice, and organic brown rice syrup
may be the latest culprit on the scene.
The rotation of the planet Venus is
slowing down, according to recent data gathered by the European
Space Agency's Venus Express satellite. Peering through the
planet's dense atmosphere with infrared imaging, the orbiter saw
surface features up to 20 km (12.4 miles) from their expected
location. The discrepancy could be explained if the Venusian day
has lengthened by six and a half minutes since the planet's
speed of rotation was established 16 years ago.
The report, released today by two
environmental groups, says the expanding biomass industry will
look at cutting trees to fuel the power plants, a departure from
the current practice of using waste wood from sawmills and other
sources.
The disk and limb were quiet and
stable. No Earth-directed CMEs were observed during the
period.chance for C-class activity for the next three dayshe
geomagnetic field is expected to be at mostly quiet levels on
day one (17 February) through late on day two (18 February).
Late on day two and through day three (19 February), field
activity is expected to increase to quiet to unsettled levels,
with isolated active levels, due to recurrent coronal hole high
speed stream effects.
Concerns over potential
contamination of drinking water from hydraulic fracturing could
be allayed by new rules requiring disclosure of fracking
chemicals that the US Interior Department will roll out in the
coming weeks, and a failure to be transparent about the
ingredients may doom the industry, Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar said Tuesday.
Scientists who have generated brain
tissue from human skin are claiming a major breakthrough.
The researchers wrote on the University
of Cambridge website that their findings could speed up the hunt
for new treatments for diseases of the cerebral cortex, such as
epilepsy and autism, to neurodegenerative conditions such as
Alzheimer’s disease.
A new MIT-Princeton University
study examining the prospective impacts of extreme storms and
storm surges based on a range of climate change scenarios
indicates that what were once 100-year and 500-year events would
become 3 to 20 and 25 to 240-year events.
Economies in states with
right-to-work laws grow significantly faster than those in
forced-union states, have higher employment growth, attract more
residents, and have more rapid growth in state and local tax
revenues than forced-union states.
An insecticide used as a seed
treatment on genetically modified corn and other crops has been
found to be highly toxic to honey bees, according to a study
published recently in the journal PLoS ONE
It's an unusual story because we
learned that an entire civilization lived and thrived on this
easily stockpiled super-food. Not only that... the ancient
warriors of this mountain empire carried this stuff with them
everywhere they went because it was so incredibly
nutrient-dense. (Legend has it they were able to march for days
on a single hand-full.)
"A rise of 2 degrees centigrade of
water temperature will likely have a devastating impact on this
Antarctic fish lineage, which is so well adapted to water at
freezing temperatures," ..The successful origin and
diversification into 100 species of fish, collectively called
notothenioids, is a textbook case of how evolution operates.
NASA currently monitors
approximately 17,000 pieces of space junk that are orbiting the
earth at extremely high speeds. These odds and ends consist of
things like dead satellites, spent rocket stages and parts that
have broken off of spacecraft. As the amount of junk increases,
it becomes increasingly difficult for functioning satellites to
avoid colliding with it.
The UN General
Assembly has voted in favour of a resolution condemning human
rights violations in Syria and calling for an end to the
violence.
The Arab-backed initiative, which also calls on President
Bashar al-Assad to resign, is the latest of several attempts to
bring an end to the crisis.
It's 4:45 on a sweltering August afternoon, and the rooftop
solar panels are starting to lose juice. The sun's lower angles
and that huge cottonwood tree are interfering with the efficient
photon-to-electricity transfer.
What is an environmentally conscious — but
air-conditioning-loving — homeowner to do?
When one thinks of iron one thinks
of a dull grey solid. Transparent iron is an odd thought. The
effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is a
known phenomena from laser physics. With intense laser light of
a certain wavelength it is possible to make a non-transparent
material transparent for light of another wavelength.
Amid the top-volume crossfire these
days about whose religion and whose health could be threatened
by federal actions, it’s noteworthy that debaters and bloviators
alike don’t notice or don’t care about ongoing violations of
Native American Peoples’ religious freedom and well being.
It's a tax credit that supposedly
has no enemies, but that wasn't true as a House and Senate
conference committee finished work on a hard-fought tax bill
Tuesday night -- only to leave out the much-sought-after
production tax credit for the wind power industry.
The World Economic Forum's Global
Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has drawn up a list of
the top 10 emerging technologies for 2012
February 14, 2012
Big U.S. manufacturers moved their
production out of the country too quickly over the past decades
and now see a competitive advantage in building up their
footprints back home, top executives said on Monday.
Anonymous is having a busy weekend.
The loose-knit hacking collective, which last week scored a
coup against the FBI, claimed yesterday to have taken down the
CIA's Web site, in what appeared to be a distributed denial of
service attack (one of the group's specialties, such relatively
unsophisticated attacks paralyze Web servers with waves of data
requests).
The Arab League asked the United
Nations Security Council on Sunday to send a peacekeeping
mission to Syria, and it called on Arab nations to sever
diplomatic relations with Damascus in an effort to pressure the
government to end the violence there.
n November 2011, about 250 Boulder County residents attended
a public meeting to discuss the planting of GM (genetically
modified) crops on county-owned land.
Their turnout, together with an anti-GMO (genetically
modified organism) recommendation from the county's Food and
Agriculture Policy Council, led county officials to vote for a
phase out of genetically engineered crops on open space.
Many economists say that if the
Federal Reserve follows through on its plan to keep interest
rates near record lows through late 2014, it risks an
inflationary crisis.
While electric cars have been seen
as environmentally friendly, the researchers determined they are
in fact responsible for more overall harmful particulate matter
pollution than gasoline cars, a university release reported
Monday.
February is shaping up nicely for
US Midwest refiners, who are enjoying robust margins courtesy of
another Brent/WTI spread blowout.
Fitch Ratings believes the federal
and state settlement over alleged deficiencies in residential
mortgage loan origination and foreclosure practices is a slight
positive for participating banks as it caps litigation risk
pertaining to these activities.
First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) said
construction permit issues might undo the October sale of the
230 MW Antelope Valley solar project in California to Exelon
Corp. (NYSE: EXC) because the U.S. Department of Energy has not
released the funds for the project.
itch Ratings believes that the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) vote on February 9
approving the combined construction and operating license (COL)
for Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 is a significant milestone in the
development of new nuclear capacity in the US but has limited
impact on credit.
Swiss Protection Socks from Swiss
Barefoot put a whole new spin on the barefoot movement. These
are essentially big, burly socks that are designed to be worn
not inside shoes, but instead of them. The manufacturer claims
that the socks are hefty enough to protect your feet from the
pain and dangers of walking completely barefoot.
Supposedly objective scientific and
economic assessments of the benefits of genetically modified
crops are often biased by the fact they are funded by the very
organisations they analyse, argues Wenonah Hauter.
Another Chinese village, apparently
inspired by the Wukan uprising of last year, has been protesting
over land grabs, causing the local government officials to flee.
Around 5000 villagers of East and West Panhe Villages, Cangnan
County, in Zhejiang Province, are now reported to be running the
village themselves.
Greece's parliament has approved an
austerity and debt-relief bill, crucial for the country to avoid
bankruptcy and remain in the eurozone.
What scientists are beginning to understand about the cause
of colony collapse could be a message for all of us.
It's often said that we have bees to thank for one out of
every three bites we take of food. In addition to producing
honey, honeybees literally criss-cross the United States,
pollinating almonds, oranges, melons, blueberries, pumpkins,
apples, and more. And while carrots are a biennial root crop
that are harvested long before they flower, all carrots are
planted from seed, and honeybees pollinate the carrot flowers
that produce the seeds. Other species of bees, both social and
solitary bees, pollinate other crops. And the populations of all
these species of bees are in decline.
It's easy to forget how much safer,
richer, warmer, cleaner and healthier we are than previous
generations. There is hope for the future; we can live on this
planet in a sustainable way.
New climate information from French
scientists indicate that global warming of 2 C is the "most
optimistic" scenario. Yet this is the amount of warming James
Hansen has referred to as a "prescription for disaster."
Israel accused Iran of
responsibility for twin bombing attempts aimed at Israeli
embassy personnel in New Delhi and Tbilisi, Georgia, on Monday,
fueling a growing confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program.
The synthetic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) — often found in
plastic containers and the linings of metal cans — is a potent,
estrogen-mimicking compound that can leach from containers into
food and water. In this interview, published by Yale Environment
360
Environmental groups in Indonesia,
the Philippines and the United States are pleased that
Indonesian authorities seized 113 shipping containers full of
toxic waste at Indonesia's largest port, but they warn that the
country is still vulnerable to illegal waste shipments from
abroad.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO)
booked a quarterly operating loss of 83.8 billion yen (1.08
billion dollars) mainly due to mounting fuel costs for thermal
power to replace decreased nuclear generation after last year's
atomic accident, the company said Monday.
xperts have been worried about
sleep-deprived kids for more than 100 years, and the demands of
"modern life" are usually to blame, according to a new study.
There continues to be this nagging notion in my thoughts and
beliefs that something is going to happen and I had better be
prepared for me and my family, and perhaps my neighbors who are
blinded by what is going on in America and the world. They keep
saying it’s been worse then this, but if they read any history,
they will know that’s not true! As an old Scout leader, I
continue to express our motto about being prepared.
Enjoy homegrown potatoes no matter how much space you have
with these step-by-step instructions for creating and using a
potato barrel.
A steady supply of light and acres
of flat, empty roofs created the perfect opportunity for
Glimcher Realty Trust to equip its sprawling Jersey Gardens mall
in Elizabeth, N.J., with a sea of solar panels.
The students are definitely
excited.
"If I can get four students that will recycle
more than they did at the beginning of December, it´s a huge
success," Biolette said. "If I can get the entire student
population, 60%, 70% or 80% of them more engaged in recycling
and have them continue that philosophy forward, that´s
phenomenal."
As anticipated in November 2011,
Moody's Investors Service has yesterday adjusted the sovereign
debt ratings of selected EU countries in order to reflect their
susceptibility to the growing financial and macroeconomic risks
emanating from the euro area crisis and how these risks
exacerbate the affected countries' own specific challenges.
It has been said that knowledge is
power, and that applies to any area in life. Of course, it is
important to arm and prepare, but it is even more important to
constantly learn new aspects of survival. Some of these arts and
sciences have been lost in the last century, as modern life has
caused humanity to know more how to use a smartphone rather than
how to build a fire. It is easy to gloss over these skills like
an old memory, when you can simply pop at TV dinner in the
microwave when you are hungry.
In the village of Pithauli, surrounded by ripening mustard
fields, a woman hauls a cow carcass on a trolley, drops it in an
open field, then runs and hides in a nearby hut as dozens of
vultures swoop down.
In under half an hour, the carcass has been reduced to picked
bones by the dun-colored birds, occasionally squabbling as they
feed.
State legislators repealed one of New Mexico's two carbon
cap-and-trade laws Feb. 6, and Farmington electric utility
officials are hoping the second one will be repealed in March.
If so, it could mean a new natural gas power plant for the
area, which would provide more power and an increase in revenue
for the city.
Fitch Ratings says that some of the
proposed changes by President Obama could be positive for the
U.S. residential market. We also believe some will be neutral
and some potentially negative. Most could face fierce political
opposition. Obama first spoke of these during the State of the
Union address on January 24 and some of the details were
released on February 1 by the White House Office of the Press
Secretary. Two of the proposals could have a material impact
on the market but their passage is uncertain.
OPEC's 12 member countries produced
an average 30.898 million b/d in January, nearly 900,000 b/d
more than their new output ceiling which came into effect at the
beginning of the year and some 1.35 million b/d above expected
demand for OPEC crude in the first quarter, the oil cartel's
Vienna secretariat said February 9.
The chorus of local communities and
elected leaders trying to temporarily halt the relicensing of
the Seabrook nuclear station is growing, but their petitions
alone will not stop it.
Solar activity is expected to be
very low to low with the chance for M-class flares over the next
3 days (14-16 February).an anticipated glancing blow from the
CME on 14 February is expected at Earth, with a subsequent
increase in geomagnetic activity.
So now, whatever the merits of the
specific accusations about Solyndra may be, the company's bad
name is being used to smear all of solar...
"I see solar today as going through
something very similar to what the telecom industry or what the
personal computer went through," he said. "We're in a
transformative phase."
Stories of conspiracies to suppress new technological
breakthroughs that threaten the status quo are almost
innumerable. While most of these tales seem to be a bit on the
tall side, in some instances there really does appear to be some
fire behind the smoke. Scam artists and hucksters may outnumber
the true unappreciated or unacknowledged geniuses by 10 to 1 (or
maybe it is more like 100 to 1), but that does not mean that
every single new discovery that gets rejected by the scientific
and media establishment is automatically unworthy of
consideration. And make no mistake – those who have vested
interests in entrenched technologies are not above
taking devious actions designed to squelch any potential
competition, and it would be naïve to the extreme to think
otherwise.
Syrian government forces attacked
opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in cities and towns
across the country on Tuesday and Arab officials confirmed that
regional governments would be ready to arm the resistance if the
bloodshed did not cease.
In his Executive Order declaring
November 2011 “Native American Heritage Month,” U.S. President
Barack Obama said that his administration “recognizes the
painful chapters in our shared history.” As a key part of that
history, today marks the 125th year since the U.S. Congress
passed the Dawes General Allotment Act in 1887.
Consumers paying gasoline prices
derived from roughly $100 WTI or $115 Brent are going to find
this hard to believe, but there's one place in the oil market
where suddenly, there is way too much crude. And prices are
showing it.
Wind farms could soon be on the
horizon for much of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Coast, both
figuratively and literally. The Interior Department has
completed a study examining how offshore wind development would
affect the region, announcing Feb. 3 that it threatens "no
significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts."
The U.S. government is seeking
software that can mine social media to predict everything from
future terrorist attacks to foreign uprisings, according to
requests posted online by federal law enforcement and
intelligence agencies.
Walney wind farm off the coast of
Cumbria in the UK yesterday became the world's largest offshore
wind facility. One hundred and two turbines over 73 sq km (28 sq
miles) provide a maximum output of 367.2 MW. It's claimed the
facility will provide enough power for about 320,000 homes -
half as many again as the total number in Cumbria
The increasing number of Americans
who use Paseo or Livi brands of toilet tissue are contributing
to the destruction of the Indonesian rainforest and tiger
habitat, finds a World Wildlife Fund report released Wednesday.
February 10, 2012
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
is expected to decide as early as Thursday whether to license
two new reactors at the site of the Vogtle nuclear power plant
in Georgia, but nine national, state and regional groups are
asking the agency to delay its decision until the groups can
file a challenge in federal court.
Attorney General Tom Horne announced that at 11:00 p.m. last
night, Arizona reached agreement to join a landmark $25 billion
joint federal-state agreement with the nation’s five largest
mortgage servicers over foreclosure abuses and fraud, and
unacceptable nationwide residential mortgage servicing
practices. Arizona’s share is over $1.6 billion. The
agreement reached last night includes settlement of Arizona’s
separate lawsuit against Bank of America.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has
announced that President Assad has agreed to send a government
delegation to Moscow to meet with representatives of the
opposition.
30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.87 percent with
an average 0.8 point for the week ending February 9, 2012,
matching last week when it also averaged 3.87 percent. Last year
at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 5.05 percent.
Now, recent research from a food
safety team at Pennsylvania's Drexel University offers
proof-of-concept for what may one day be a common approach to
preventing food-borne illness from raw poultry and meat products
- the use of high-energy, low temperature plasma to eliminate
unwanted bacteria while leaving the food basically unchanged.
It is not just in laptop computers, mobile telephones and LED
screens that scarce metals are to be found but also in solar
cells, batteries for mobile technologies and many other similar
applications. And the rising demand for these metals increases
the risk of a bottleneck in supplies...
Many of the problems that were discussed stemmed from the
American financial crisis of 2008-2009, arguably the product of
a market failure, and the European sovereign crisis of 2011-12,
arguably a state failure. Together, they have created what one
participant termed "a lost decade." Young people trying to enter
the labor market for the first time during one of these crises
may already be consigned to what another commentator deemed a
"lost generation."
According to our sources, the rogue
agency is digging in its heels on the NDI draft guidance that
threatens so many supplements, refusing to listen to Congress or
follow the intent of the law. Senators Orrin Hatch and Tom
Harkin met with Dr. Daniel Fabricant of the FDA on January 26 to
request that the FDA withdraw its NDI draft guidance
altogether—a meeting that ANH-USA, together with some trade
groups, helped set up.
The U.S. Department of Defense is
funding a study, to develop fast bone-healing treatments that
could be used on soldiers, along with civilians and even
animals. Already, scientists have gotten promising results in
laboratory tests, using something they call "fracture putty."
The Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power
plant was "near meltdown" after being hit by tsunami following
the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, according to the
head of the plant.
Inspectors searching for
shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles amassed by Moammar Gadhafi
and prized by terrorists can't account for potentially thousands
of them.
"The frank answer is we don't know
and probably never will," said Andrew Shapiro, an assistant
secretary of State.
U.S. farmers and those in
developing countries helped drive a surge in new plantings of
genetically modified crops around the globe in 2011, even in the
face of resistance from Europe and from those who think such
crops ought to carry special labels.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency announced Thursday Dec. 8, 2011 in Wyoming, for the first
time that fracking may be to blame for causing groundwater
pollution. The EPA also emphasized that the findings are
specific to the Pavillion area. The agency said the fracking
that occurred in Pavillion differed from fracking methods used
elsewhere in regions with different geological characteristics.
EPIA Secretary General
The
year 2012 began with a good news/bad news mix for the solar
photovoltaic industry. The good news? The market for PV has
continued to grow in Europe and around the world (see EPIA’s new
“Market Report 2011” for the full story). The bad news? Some
European governments are backing away from support schemes that
in recent years have helped shrink the competitiveness gap
between PV and conventional electricity sources.
Greek
political parties delayed yet again on Tuesday making the tough
choice of accepting painful reforms in return for a new
international bailout to avoid a chaotic default, seemingly deaf
to EU warnings that the euro zone can live without Athens.
Greek political leaders clinched a
long-delayed deal on Thursday on harsh austerity measures and
reforms required to secure a second international bailout in two
years but the country's financial backers reacted skeptically.
The trial, the first of its kind in
the world, will help to establish the United States as the EV
market leader. The trial will follow Hertz, and leaders from
five other industry segments, as they trial Plugless Power
systems on their own electric vehicles. Participants will
provide feedback on daily usage routines, user interfaces, and
any additional functionality needed. The Plugless Power system
is supplied by Evatran based in Virginia.
The International Energy Agency
said Friday it has raised its estimate of the amount of
additional oil Japan's power generation sector will buy in 2012
as a result of ongoing nuclear outages following last year's
devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Iran bought 200,000 tons of
Australian, and possibly US, wheat last week with gold.
Commodities traders say Iran is also pitching oil barter deals
for grains.
Members of the Iranian parliament
are moving to accelerate a bill that would halt oil exports to
the European Union ahead of an EU ban on oil imports from Iran
that comes into force on July 1, and which would also ban
imports of goods from the EU, Iranian news agencies reported
February 7.
With Iran's biggest buyers cutting imports of its crude and
looking for other suppliers, Tehran says the time is right for
the world's fifth largest oil producer and the second biggest
gas holder to go green.
Iran's renewable sector is tiny, as in much of the Middle
East where investments have been focused on building
energy-hungry industry fuelled by cheap oil and gas.
Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being
carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is
financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S.
officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s
leaders.
Japan's Tokyo Electric Power
Company is maintaining normal operations at its
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in northwestern Japan after a
strong earthquake hit the region Wednesday evening, a company
official said Thursday.
A majority of models predict La
Niña to weaken through the rest of the Northern Hemisphere
winter 2011-12, and then to dissipate during the spring 2012
There are societies throughout
human history that have seemed to simply vanish. These stories,
from the disappearing civilizations of the Maya to the Khmer,
both of whom have left behind the astonishing spoils of their
culture when it was at its peak, are enduring mysteries as well
as grave reminders of how quickly a powerful society can be
destroyed. Or, as is the case with the indigenous culture of
the Easter Islands, destroy themselves.
...there is some evidence that the
retreat occurred at a time when warmer water was present on the
continental shelf, leading us to suggest that the Marguerite Bay
ice stream may have been destabilized, at least in part, by
changes in the ocean.
Having a simple, easy-to-pronounce
name is more likely to win you friends and favor in the
workplace, a study by Dr Simon Laham at the University of
Melbourne and Dr Adam Alter at New York University Stern School
of Business, has found.
The team took advantage of a
mechanism similar to that which permits many invertebrates to
regenerate and repair nerve damage. The new procedure, based on
timely application of common chemicals to the severed nerve
ends, could help patients to recover nearly full function in
days or weeks.
According to research conducted by
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Chinese solar
manufacturers do not enjoy any cost saving advantages over those
solar manufacturers in the United States. This research dispels
incorrect assumptions of the opposite and confirms that Chinese
production of crystalline silicon solar technology for the U.S.
market costs more than U.S. production for the domestic market,
when the costs of shipping are included.
Whether it’s the 21st Century’s
version of Stars Wars is yet to be seen. But advocates of
nuclear fusion are saying that it would be life-changing while
politicos are helping to bring it one step closer to reality.
President Obama and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton are entering negotiations over -- or
seeking ratification of -- five treaties that could radically
limit our national sovereignty and the reach of our democratic
institutions. Particularly scary is that the treaties, once
signed and ratified, have the same status as constitutional law
and cannot be altered or eclipsed by Congress or state
legislatures. And their provisions must be enforced by U.S.
courts.
Oil prices rose slightly above $99
a barrel on Thursday, supported by investors' faith in a bailout
deal for Greece even as U.S. crude demand lagged behind the
overall improvement in the world's biggest economy.
OPEC's 12 member countries produced
an average 30.898 million b/d in January, nearly 900,000 b/d
more than their new output ceiling which came into effect at the
beginning of the year and some 1.35 million b/d above expected
demand for OPEC crude in the first quarter, the oil cartel's
Vienna secretariat said February 9.
Man-made air pollution from
Southeast Asia causes the loss of 6.7 million tonnes of wheat
and about 11.6 million tonnes of rice globally each year, while
pollutants from North America reduce wheat yields in Europe by
1.2 million tonnes each year, according to a new study.
The new material consists of tiny
hollow spheres, made out of nanocrystalline-silicon. While
nanocrystalline-silicon has good electrical efficiency and is
able to stand up to the damaging effects of sunlight, is isn't
particularly good at absorbing light - in past attempts at using
it for photovoltaics, it has had to be thickly layered, which
has in turn resulted in long manufacturing times. That's where
the spheres - known as nanoshells - come into play.
The United States remained the
primary backer of biotech crop technology in 2011, but adoption
spread internationally as the total global planted area of
genetically modified seeds grew 8 percent from a year ago,
according to a report issued Tuesday.
It was the simple beauty of the sagebrush hills and the
first-rate fishing that drew Vince Salvato here 15 years ago.
"All I wanted was a quiet, pristine place with clean air," he
said, sipping sarsaparilla inside Bronco Bobbi's curio shop in
this tiny town in southern Utah. "That's why I came here."
But the tranquillity has been broken by the day-and-night
rumble of trucks ferrying coal from a strip mine near Bryce
Canyon National Park to a power plant three hours to the north.
A proposed settlement in Westar
Energy's latest customer rate case would grant the utility a $50
million annual increase in electric rates, of which more than 80
percent -- or $41 million -- residents and small businesses
would have to pay.
Tens of thousands of Russians have turned out repeatedly in
the past two months for protests calling for a rerun of the
December parliamentary vote marred by accusations of fraud.
Hawaiian Electric Co. customers
installed a record amount of solar power generating capacity on
their rooftops last year, causing a reduction in utility revenue
that HECO says it will have to make up with an increase in
rates.
In a statement,
company and trade association leaders expressed concern for a
looming crisis that has put thousands of jobs in these states at
risk. The call comes as opponents of renewable energy tax policy
place the future of these industries in jeopardy.
With holdout attorneys general in
California and New York set to sign on, multiple reports
Wednesday night said a nationwide foreclosure settlement with
five major banks could be made official as early as Thursday.
C-class flaring, produced two B9
x-ray events. No Earth-directed CMEs were observed during
the period.Solar activity is expected to remain at low levels
for the next three days (10 - 12 February). A slight chance
for M-class activity existsThe geomagnetic field was at quiet to
unsettled levels with isolated active periods observed at high
latitudes.
Second Sight has published interim
results of an international clinical trial showing encouraging
results in blind patients suffering severe retinitis pigmentosa
(RP) - a group of genetic degenerative eye conditions that leads
to incurable blindness.
U.S. scientists using satellite
data have established a more accurate figure of the amount of
annual sea level rise from melting glaciers and ice caps which
should aid studies on how quickly coastal areas may flood as
global warming gathers pace.
Over reliance on Natural Gas to
supply base-load power plants introduces a risk dependency
relationship. Duke Energy Corp. CEO James E. Rogers said the
U.S. should be careful about relying on natural gas for energy.
The electric utilities' increased demand for Natural Gas may
cause a price revision by late 2012. Commodity traders expect to
see buying opportunities through 2013 while sellers are advised
to wait until mid-2012 at the earliest.
Stimulating the brain with an
electrical current can improve memory, according to a study that
suggests a novel approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease and
dementia.
The closing of three power plants in West Virginia is "a
victory for clean air and local residents' health," a Sierra
Club release said.
The three plants -- Albright, Rivesville and Willow Island,
near Parkersburg -- are slated for retirement Sept. 1 as a
result of new Environmental Protection Agency regulations,
according to FirstEnergy, which owns the power stations.
So-called modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) involves
controlling or modifying the atmosphere surrounding the product
to slow spoilage. This can be accomplished by coating the food
with an edible film
Heavy snowfall across eastern Europe cut off hundreds of
villages on Tuesday and rescue teams struggled to evacuate
people in southern Bulgaria where rain and melting snow had
caused a dam wall to break, flooding an entire village.
A river dike also broke under intense water pressure near
Kapitan Andreevo at the border with Turkey, officials said.
Like the two solar farms now under
way, the bigger effort would be a so-called "brownfield to
brightfield project," said Gil Hough, manager of RSI's Renewable
Energy Division.
Tariffs are likely, China will
remain dominant in regionalized manufacturing, and pricing will
largely be unaffected.
Many see anaerobic digestion as a vital tool in achieving a
low carbon future. and
Feasibility studies confirm the market demand and acceptance
of anaerobic digestion (AD) technology. The potential of this
technology has only been within reach of large, profitable
organisations, but a new project aimed at bringing cutting-edge
anaerobic digestion technologies to rural and smaller scale
businesses is being launched to combat this.
Montana’s Indian country is sacred ground for all of the Big
Sky’s tribes. Tribal lands safeguard and preserve ceremonial
sites from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. Each site
deserves our everlasting respect and protection.
But the U.S. House of Representatives is currently
considering a bill that undermines the sanctity of these places
and the sovereignty of Montana’s tribes. As Montana’s only
member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, I want all
Montanans to understand the consequences of this bill.
The deceptively named National Security and Federal Lands
Protection Act (H.R. 1505)...
US crude oil stocks inched up
304,000 barrels to 339.246 million barrels during the week that
ended February 3, as a product demand hit a 13-year record low
despite increased refinery rates, data Wednesday from the U.S.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed.
The Office of Inspector General
found no evidence of improper communication with either the
Canadian government or TransCanada. It also found no evidence
that TransCanada influenced the State Department's selection of
Cardno Entrix as a third-party contractor to conduct the lengthy
environmental review and write a draft environmental impact
statement.
Anaerobic Digestion Says: According to Bloomberg New Energy
Finance, "Investment in biomass and waste-to-energy is projected
to increase from $14bn in 2010 to $80bn by 2020". Among the
greatest beneficiaries are processes such as Anaerobic Digestion
(AD) and other innovative waste conversion technologies that can
manage organics sustainably and achieve a greater rate of
landfill diversion.
We are losing the battle for salmon
recovery in western Washington because salmon habitat is being
destroyed faster than it can be restored. Despite massive cuts
in harvest, careful use of hatcheries and a huge financial
investment in restoration during the past four decades, salmon
continue to decline along with their habitat. As the salmon
disappear, so do our tribal cultures and treaty rights. We are
at a crossroads, and we are running out of time.
In 1962 the United States
government discovered nuclear EMP when the lights went out in
Hawaii after a nuclear test detonation. 50 years later, we are
no closer to hardening our infrastructure against such a
devastating attack than we were then.
In the U.S. overall, thank the
expiring US Federal Cash Grant for accelerating project activity
to beat the year-end deadline. At the state level, California's
Solar Initiative ratepayer program brought in an extra $200
million during the quarter, helping to pare down a long waitlist
of customer-side distributed generation.
One of the biggest reasons for genetic engineering of crops
is that the harsh poisons used to kill weeds also tend to kill
the crops themselves. Scientists genetically alter the crops’
DNA so they will resist damage from the herbicides. Most of the
attention to date has been on the creation of Roundup Ready
seeds—that is, seeds and crops that can withstand the herbicide
Roundup from Monsanto. According to USDA figures, 94 percent of
soybeans and more than 70 percent of corn and cotton planted in
the US contain the Roundup-resistant gene.
When FirstEnergy discovered the
cracking in the concrete wall of the aging shield building at
the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and until the public hearing
held by the NRC at my request on January 5, 2012, FirstEnergy
consistently told the public that the cracks were confined to
"architectural elements" or "decorative elements" of the wall. I
was skeptical because I had never before heard of a "decorative
element" in the walls of a nuclear reactor building.
By embracing wind "as an
architectural element", architectural practice
Betillon/Dorval-Bory believes its anabatic office concept is
ideally suited to hot and humid climes. But rather than relying
on natural air movement, the anabatic office seeks to create its
own wind, so that energy-efficient cooling can occur where
little natural wind occurs. Anabatic is a word that describes an
uphill wind generated by a localized heat source.
The controversial Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste repository project terminated by the Obama
administration could still be an option for disposing of US
commercial spent nuclear fuel, but the amount of total waste
would soon make a second site necessary, according to a senior
member of a federal commission set up to look at the issue.
February 7, 2012
Of these borrowers, 37 percent maintained about the same loan
amount, and 49 percent of refinancing homeowners reduced their
principal balance; this latter percentage reflecting "cash-in"
borrowers was the highest in the 26-year history of the
analysis. "Cash-out" borrowers, those that increased their
loan balance by at least five percent, represented 15 percent of
all refinance loans, the lowest percentage in the 26 years of
analysis; the average cash-out share during the 1985 to 2010
period was 46 percent.
Maricopa County, Arizona is set to play host to a 125 MW
photovoltaic solar power plant, according to an announcement on
Tuesday from Fluor Corporation. The company has won the separate
contracts to build and maintain the facility, which upon
completion will fleetingly join the ranks of the the world's
largest photovoltaic solar farms.
A disregard for airspace regulations is stifling the
development of wind and solar power and limiting the potential
for renewable energy growth on the grid, according to a law
professor at the University of Missouri.
"I saw this guy step out of the house with a sack of stuff on
his back like Santa Claus," Foster said.
So what to do? Shout at the man? Call 911 and wait? Stay
inside and look the other way?
"I got my pistol out," Foster said matter-of-factly.
"Experimentally, we obtained copper; and we believe that its
appearance is due to the fusion of atomic nuclei of nickel and
hydrogen, the ingredients that feed our reactor. Since hydrogen
and nickel 'weigh' with less, copper must have released a lot of
energy, since 'nothing is created or destroyed.' Indeed, the
'Missing Mass' has been transformed into energy, which we have
measured: it is in the order of a few kilowatts, two hundred
times the energy that was the beginning of the reaction."
It's clear our country has an energy problem, and both
business and government have a role in fixing it. It's time for
business to stop being passive when it comes to managing energy,
and government can help. Here are four steps that can be taken
to deliver on the promises made in the State of the Union
address.
Such fossil and documentary evidence as is available
indicates that occasional spectacular blooms of jellyfish are a
normal part of such organisms' natural history, and may be
linked to natural climate cycles. But blooms drew less attention
in decades and centuries gone by.
30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.87 percent with
an average 0.8 point for the week ending February 2, 2012, down
from last week when it averaged 3.98 percent. Last year at this
time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.81 percent.
Shale oil and natural gas producers using hydraulic
fracturing on US government-owned land will be required to fully
disclose to the Bureau of Land Management the composition of
their fracking fluids, but will be offered some protection for
trade secrets, according to a copy of draft rules.
"The Fed policy has resulted in a huge infusion of capital
into the system, creating a massive rise in liquidity but
negligible movement of that money," Schwab writes in The Wall
Street Journal. "It is sitting there, in banks all across
America, unused."
But Lighting up in China. While U.S. utilities that
burn coal are becoming increasingly challenged to find newer and
cleaner sources of energy, those in China and other parts of the
developing world are hungry for more. Therefore, coal producers
here will find that international markets potentially more
lucrative.
Over the last several years, there have been many reports
around the world about important multiple successes with what is
popularly known as "Cold Fusion", or more properly what is now
known as "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions" (LENR).
Within a few years, that flying
object overhead might not be a bird or a plane, but an unmanned
aircraft.
Beef prices rose more than 10
percent over last year and the Department of Agriculture reports
at least another 5 percent increase in 2012. In spite of
official White House news that inflation stands at under 2
percent, that isn’t the reality consumers are seeing in the
supermarket or at the gas pump.
Here in the United States, we’re
spoiled. Food is cheap. I know it’s hard to believe, given what
you’ve probably been paying for groceries lately. But it’s true.
Even with rising food prices, we still pay a smaller percentage
of our income for food than residents of just about any other
country in the world. But the farming system that helps keep our
food costs down also puts us at great risk. It’s the same
farming system that caused the Irish Potato Famine.
The Obama administration is
studying ways to overhaul government-backed mortgage giants
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — even considering closing them down
— and bring private capital back into the mortgage markets,
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says.
Since the U.S. completed its
pullout in December, militant groups have stepped up attacks on
Iraq’s security forces and government institutions to undermine
public confidence in the Shiite-dominated government and its
efforts to protect people.
Solar panels may be environmentally
friendly, but officials in some towns are worried they might
offend the neighbors.
nonymous hackers have posted a YouTube video of a candid
conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which
investigators talk about hacking suspects, including a
15-year-old one UK-based law enforcement official called “a bit
of an idiot” and a “pain in the butt.”
The headwinds that are keeping offshore wind production at
bay are easing up somewhat. It’s all because the Obama
administration has finished an environmental assessment that is
giving de facto approval to development in some areas.
Iran's foreign ministry dismissed
Tuesday as "psychological war" an Executive Order by US
President Barack Obama to freeze the assets of the Iranian
government and its central bank in a bid to pressure Tehran to
settle its nuclear row with the West.
Iran began ground military
exercises Saturday and defiantly warned that it could cut off
oil exports to "hostile" European nations as tensions rise over
suggestions that military strikes are an increasing possibility
if sanctions fail to rein in the Islamic Republic's nuclear
program.
The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out
the legal and religious justification for the destruction of
Israel and the slaughter of its people.
The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish
people worldwide.
On the first
of this month it was reported that scientists were about to
complete a 30 year drilling expedition to hit a
20-million-year-old lake: this week they’ve reached the surface.
This body of water called Vostok is Antarctica’s largest
subglacial lake and is believed by scientists to be “the only
giant super-clean water system on the planet.”
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and
Energy Secretary Steven Chu plan to flip the switch Monday night
on newly installed LED lights that will illuminate most of the
Mall — and reduce the National Park Service’s energy bill.
Doctors could soon be diagnosing
diseases using breathalyzer-like technology like that used to
estimate blood alcohol levels
The government of India has made it
very clear that they will not tolerate Monsanto's attempts to
commercialize on their indigenous knowledge, a practice known as
biopiracy.
An international team of scientists
led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from
the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered
a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years
away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger
than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star
in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours.
If Americans think Congress is at
at impasse now, just wait until lawmakers return to tackling the
disposal of nuclear waste. That’s pretty much what a commission
appointed by President Obama has said.
A worker at a Southern California
nuclear power plant fell into a reactor pool but did not suffer
significant radiation exposure, plant officials said. ...It is
unclear why it took almost week to report the incident.
Previously, only assets belonging
to sanctioned Iranian entities or individuals were frozen. The
order signed by the president yesterday blocks all property and
interests in property belonging to the Iranian government, its
central bank, and all Iranian financial institutions, even those
that haven’t been specifically designated for sanctions by the
U.S. Treasury.
Intriguing similarities between
slavery and our current dependence on fossil-fuel-powered
machines struck me: both perform roughly the same functions in
society (doing the hard and dirty work that no one wants to do),
both were considered for a long time to be acceptable by the
majority and both came to be increasingly challenged as the harm
they caused became more visible.
The noble (inert) gas engine by PlasmERG, Inc., with very few
moving parts could potentially (when mass produced) cost a
third, or less, what a regular engine of comparable output
costs. Meanwhile, its fuel cost is negligible -- approximately
$0.71 per cylinder charge, which lasts a few months. It has a
zero carbon footprint.
It's kind of like a Stirling engine -- a sealed system --
except that the expanding component is internal, and comes by
way of a plasma form of inert, noble gasses...
More than two dozen cities
nationwide have either banned plastic grocery bags -- in some
cases even paper bags -- entirely or have imposed a fee for
using them in order to encourage the use of reusable bags. Other
cities are considering similar action. However, such policies
have hidden costs that are virtually ignored.
Coal is used across our planet as a
source of energy, and has been for a very long time. Among the
biggest consumers of coal are traditional power plants that burn
it in huge quantities to produce electricity for the power grid.
By burning this substance as fuel, these plants emit carbon
dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and produce vast amounts of a
waste product called fly ash. Managing carbon dioxide and fly
ash can be a challenging task, especially as environmental
regulations have become more severe. Many power plants are
facing having to shut down due to the huge cost of complying
with the regulations.
“There are a significant number of funds that are either
currently fundraising or planning to do so in 2012, which could
lead to a marked uptick in fundraising activity in the coming
year”
Coconino County's Board of
Supervisors was nearly evenly split a year ago over whether to
permit construction of the county's first industrial-scale wind
farm north of Williams.
Innovation in the electricity
market does not occur as it would in other markets. For
starters, most areas of the country are served by monopoly
providers. This means there is very little incentive to seek new
ways to create electricity. Secondly, most providers are heavily
regulated, often compounding risk-reluctant utilities with
risk-averse regulators.
A new report released Monday
escalated the internal battle within the U.S. solar industry
over a push to impose duties on Chinese solar imports.
Solar activity is likely to be low
with a chance for moderate levels from Region 1410 for days 1
and 2 (7-8 February).The geomagnetic field is expected to be
mostly quiet for days 1-2 (7-8 February).
As green building practices become
more commonplace in the global construction industry, the goal
of designing zero energy buildings, or buildings that consume as
much energy as they produce through on-site and renewable energy
systems, has emerged as the next major frontier. A number of
countries and regions have already established long-term targets
and regulations requiring zero energy building construction that
will come into effect over the coming years, some as soon as
2016.
Relations between the United States
and Russia are incredibly tense as both countries prepare for
presidential elections in 2012. The campaign season has
presented both sides opportunities to escalate tensions, but it
is unclear how far each side will go.
An editorial signed by 16 prominent
scientists in the Wall Street Journal takes sharp issue with
calls for drastic action against global warming, asserting that
the threat is far from “incontrovertible” as alarmists claim.
While there have been many
suggestions as to what has caused the rise in food allergies in
recent years, the one that has received the most attention is
known as the hygiene hypothesis. The basic idea behind the
hypothesis is that when children are exposed to few germs, their
immune systems don’t develop properly.
"The purpose of this project is to
become energy independent and control our overhead costs for
energy," Gideon said. "As consultants and providing sales and
installation of energy efficiency and renewable systems, it is
important that we also live the lifestyle."
A lot of people may not even know about smart meters, the new
devices installed by Lakeland Electric that allow people to
monitor their electrical usage in real time.
But Treasa Towson and Joe Messoras are fully aware of the
meters.
And they're both outraged about planned installations this
summer.
Worried that the Federal Reserve
and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, more than a
dozen states have proposed using their own alternative
currencies of silver and gold.
...weather forecasters, many of
whom see climate change as a natural, cyclical phenomenon, are
split over whether they have a responsibility to educate their
viewers on the link between human activity and the change in the
Earth's climates.
Sugar is now 20 percent of the
American diet, but it's not just our health that suffers from
its pervasiveness.
Beyond the attention of many
observers, America’s clean energy transformation is already well
underway, thanks in large part to massive investments by the
electric power industry. Utilities have picked up where many
venture firms and other investors left off — at the point where
technologies already proven in a laboratory setting are ready to
be deployed in the market.
...financial experts are saying the
figures may have been manipulated — and that the significant
drop in employment was because of the fact that the federal
agency charged with computing key economic data has
significantly decreased the number of Americans in the
workforce.
A panel of current and former heads
of government, ministers and lawmakers Monday launched a plan
for world leaders to propel an "ever-green" energy revolution
that could wean the world off fossil fuels, when they meet in
Brazil later this year.
In a November, Greenwich Associates
asked 114 U.S. companies with annual sales of at least $500
million about their expectations for the 2012 business and
economic environment, strategic steps they are taking to prepare
for the year ahead and their assessments of various government
economic policies.
Decades of space activity have
littered low Earth orbit with debris, and as the world's
spacefaring nations increase their activities, the chance for
collision increases. The security of space also is threatened by
what U.S. State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Space
and Defense Policy Frank Rose Sunday called "irresponsible
actors."
“On the plus side, the
entrepreneurial energy pouring into Silicon Valley from around
the world grows stronger every month. On the minus side, the
lack of institutional LP support for early stage venture capital
will leave hundreds of companies stranded when they need more
capital later next year.”
A recent analysis of
onshore wind energy cost trends, conducted jointly by the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory Recent Developments in the Levelized Cost of
Energy from U.S. Wind Power Projects' estimates that the
levelized cost of wind energy is now trending towards an
all-time low within fixed wind resource areas.
February 3, 2012
Alzheimer's disease appears to spread in a predictable
pattern, infecting brain cell after brain cell as the disease
spreads along linked circuits known as synapses, according to a
new study.
the best way that I know how to combat that is not with
another layer of clothing, but with something warm to fill my
belly, either a hot cup of broth to wrap my hands around so that
the warmth suffuses through these chilly bones, or a bowl of
soup to savor that spreads its heat throughout my body with
every swallow.
In late 2011 President Obama announced the Better Buildings
Challenge, a $4 billion program sponsored by the DOE with the
support of a number of public and private sector partners. The
program aims to make American buildings 20% more energy
efficient by 2020 by directing federal agencies to engage in
performance contracts (driving efficiency with zero taxpayer
funds) as well as mobilizing major companies to invest in
efficiency upgrades to their own buildings and plants.
Today, the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) National Security
Project released its fourth report on
Iran's nuclear development urging
the United States to
immediately adopt a triple-track strategy that simultaneously
pursues diplomacy, tough sanctions and credible, visible
preparations for military action on the part of
the United States or
Israel.
he property price statistics currently include data from 44
countries, and are available at different frequencies. The data
differ significantly from country to country, for instance in
terms of sources of information on prices, type of property,
area covered, property vintage, priced unit, detailed
compilation methods and seasonal adjustment.
The vast majority of California's electricity--42
percent--comes from natural gas, followed by nuclear power and
hydropower. According to 2010 figures from the California Energy
Commission, wind made up 4.7 percent of the state's electricity
mix and solar was 0.3 percent.
But in 2011, wind projects that generate 921
megawatts--enough electricity for more than 400,000 homes--were
installed across the state, which the wind association says
should put it above the long sought after five percent
threshold. California has set an ambitious goal of getting 33
percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, and
utilities are increasingly signing contracts for renewable
projects.
On Wednesday, Honda was ordered to pay Heather Peters for
misleading her about the gas mileage her Civic Hybrid would
achieve, and other car owners could follow in the steps of the
former lawyer who took on a corporate giant, and won.
The lush vegetation wrapping the center of the globe is one
of the most important features for regulating a stable climate
in the world. Much excess CO2 emissions from industrialized
regions find their way to the equator to be absorbed by abundant
CO2-consuming plant life. However, as large tracts of tropical
rainforest are cut down in the Amazon, Congo, and Southeast
Asia, worries have grown that this vital region may turn from a
carbon sink to a carbon source.
US crude oil stocks rose 4.175 million barrels last week, as
imports increased and total product demand softened, data from
the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed Wednesday.
At 338.942 million barrels, crude stocks are 3.6% above the
five-year average. Analysts projected a build of 3 million
barrels.
A new report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient
Economy (ACEEE) reveals how energy efficiency can be used by
states, policymakers, and utilities developing compliance
strategies to meet the goals of federal air regulations. As
mandated under the Clean Air Act, a suite of upcoming air
regulations will impose limits on the emissions of multiple air
pollutants.
In another outrageous power-grab, FDA says your own stem
cells are drugs—and stem cell therapy is interstate commerce
because it affects the bottom line of FDA-approved drugs in
other states!
Just as the lunar new year dawns, NASA probes have brought us
video of a the mythical far side of the moon, a sight never seen
from Earth.
Fort Carson appears on track to be off the grid by 2020, Army
officials said Wednesday.
Fort Carson generates 3.5 percent of the energy used on post
-- enough to be on track to be "net zero" in eight years as part
of a pilot program for bases to provide for their own water and
electricity needs, Army officials said.
The huge, belching smokestacks of electric power plants have
long symbolized air pollution problems. But a shift is under
way: More and more electric plants around the nation are being
fueled by natural gas, which is far cleaner than coal, the
traditional fuel.
General Electric Co. expects increased competition and a
reduction in subsidies by cash-strapped governments to lead to
more companies exiting the wind and solar power businesses, but
the industrial behemoth still sees growing long-term demand.
A Senate committee revived the stalled debate over renewable
energy in Florida on Monday and moved forward with a bill to
give $16 million a year in tax incentives to businesses and
homeowners, beginning next year.
So Romney's people set out to mire Newt in negatives so he
couldn't and wouldn't get out the positive message he needed to
project to prevail. They tormented him with negative ads in
Iowa. While the ads were generally accurate -- the allegation
about backing China's forced-abortion policy aside -- they
presented only one side of the story and were stinging in their
impact. Without funds, Gingrich couldn't answer the negative
ads. He fumed but watched, in impotence, as his vote share fell
away.
North America is at an inflection point in managing organic
materials. Just as paper, metal and plastics were the darlings
of the recycling industry a couple decades ago, our society is
defining a new relationship with organic materials: one that
harnesses the full carbon, energy and nutrient potential of
organics. In order to help shape that new relationship, industry
leaders are cultivating North America's awareness and
understanding of anaerobic digestion's features, benefits and
potential role in society.
Secretary of Defense Panetta says he believes there is a
strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear weapons
facilities this spring. LIGNET, the global intelligence and
forecasting service, reveals what ways Iran may retaliate
against the U.S. and Israel. LIGNET details the risk of an
Iranian bio-terror surprise attack.
The EU ban on imports of Iranian oil due to come into effect
July 1 is having no impact on Iran's crude production and it is
EU countries that will suffer from the embargo, Iranian oil
minister Rostam Ghasemi said January 31.
"The threat of war is detrimental to the United States. The
war itself is ten times more detrimental to the United States.
Why is that so? Because the threats show the US inability to
approach by dialogue and reason," he said.
Iran’s nuclear program is one of the most polarizing issues
in one of the world’s most volatile regions. While American and
European officials believe Tehran is planning to build nuclear
weapons, Iran’s leadership says that its goal in developing a
nuclear program is to generate electricity without dipping into
the oil supply it prefers to sell abroad, and to provide fuel
for medical reactors.
But a United Nations report...
Iran has agreed to accept 45% of the payment for its oil
exports to India in rupees after recent negotiations with Indian
officials during their visit to Tehran, the daily Indian Express
reported Thursday quoting unnamed sources.
Hundreds of protesters demonstrating outside parliament
Tuesday clashed with Muslim Brotherhood members, leaving more
than 20 injured as tensions sharpened between Islamists and
liberals over the fate of the revolution that toppled President
Hosni Mubarak.
Japanese officials renewed their case February 2 for an
exemption from US sanctions on Iranian oil deals during talks in
Washington between the two governments, according to Tokyo
sources.
Kamakura Corporation reported Wednesday that the Kamakura
index of troubled public companies declined, rising 0.77% to
7.27% in January. The index has deteriorated in seven of the
last nine months.
The bowhead doesn’t stand a chance. His killers have
surrounded him, holding him underwater and covering his blowhole
so he can’t breathe. They immobilize his flippers and tail while
ramming the beast to break ribs and damage internal organs as
they tear chunks of flesh from the living animal.
A big energy-related disaster doesn't just leave horrible marks
on people's lives; it also can propel better and quicker policy
and technology adoption. Kyocera on Monday said it plans to
start selling a system that pairs solar panels with lithium-ion
batteries for the residential market in Japan starting this
summer.
"You may idly wish you could hear what others are thinking
yet write off telepathy as science fiction. But one day, the
ability to read people’s minds may not be a talent reserved for
psychics and the X-Men. A group of neuroscientists at the
University of California, Berkeley, reported they may have come
up with a scientific way to read people’s minds."
When NATO looks at Iran it would seem reasonable to expect
that it was looking at how the western world's warships are
cramming into the Strait of Hormuz amidst charge and
counter-charge that the strait faces the prospect of an Iranian
blockade.
ThermoEnergy Corp. (OTCBB: TMEN) expects that tough new rules
on coal-fired power plant emissions which were finalized
recently by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will spur
demand for effective, efficient, clean combustion technology.
Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has once again
sprung a leak, releasing more than eight tonnes of potentially
radioactive water.
The New York Times magazine on Sunday published a critically
important story by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, one of the
most respected Israeli journalists following the Iran story over
several decades. It is headlined: "Will Israel Attack Iran?"
Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over
accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original
selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Obama,
as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday.
If you were outside today in Downtown Chicago — Any time
after about 1030am CST — 1/30/2012 — chances are , you may have
been exposed to NUCLEAR RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT from the steam that
was vented by the Byron Illinois / Exelon Nuclear power
plant.
More specifically, aerosolized particulates of Tritium were
in the clouds of steam released—- those clouds then blew down
into Chicago area proper. As to whether people inhaled
these particles — only time will tell now.
They say low levels— but — you can
easily find out the health risks associated with this
radioactive particle.
On top of fukushima (japan) radiation – this is the last
thing anyone needs.
President Obama is saying that his administration will open
up more than three-quarters of the potential offshore oil and
gas resources to development, prompting friends and foes alike
to accuse him of having political motives.
Saying federal agencies can't keep up with their current
workload for leasing federal lands to oil and gas drillers, two
industry groups renewed their push Thursday against new
regulations signaled by President Barack Obama in his State of
the Union speech last week.
If the world’s 3.5 billion tillable acres were transitioned
to organic agriculture, organic farms could sequester 40% of
yearly carbon emissions. Tell Congress: Organic Is the
Answer to Climate Change!
Organic Could Sequester 40% of Greenhouse Gas
Emissions!
USET President Brian Patterson says it’s urgent not only for
the tribes to unite, but for tribal organizations all across the
country to “bundle their arrows” to gain the strength needed to
move Indian country’s agenda forward. “I think the Indian tribal
organizations in their role as a voice representing the member
tribes really have a great opportunity and advantage to identify
the greater good and commonality for Indian country,”...
As global demand for coal continues to rise, some producers
see the US graduating from being a swing supplier to become a
strategic supplier to world markets.
After being hammered by record high food prices in 2011,
which helped ignite the Arab Spring uprisings, consumers
worldwide may find some relief in 2012 if U.S. farmers, induced
by last year's high crop prices, plant more fields to grain this
year.
New data from the federal government shows that Hawaii
residents paid the highest rates for electricity in the country
in 2010.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the average
price in Hawaii that year was 25.1 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Wyoming had the lowest retail rate at 6.2 cents.
Solar activity is expected to be very low to low for the next
3 days (03-05 February). Geophysical Activity Summary 01/2100Z
to 02/2100Z: The geomagnetic field was quiet.The geomagnetic
field is expected to be quiet to unsettled on day 1 (03
February) due to CH HSS effects. Conditions should return to
mostly quiet levels on days 2 and 3 (04-05 February).
The discovery could be applied to nuclear fuel reprocessing
or to clean up nuclear reactor accidents. A characteristic of
nuclear energy is that used fuel can be reprocessed to recover
fissile materials and provide fresh fuel for nuclear power
plants. Countries such as France, Russia and India are
reprocessing spent fuel.
A group of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have
built a prototype of a small-caliber bullet capable of steering
itself towards a laser-marked target located approximately 2,000
meters (1.2 miles) away.
Aiming to restore voters' faith in Congress, the Senate
overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday that makes clear it's
illegal for members of Congress, their staffs and many
executive-branch employees to trade stocks and other securities
based on inside information learned on the job.
A recent report has generated lots of buzz by finding that as
many as 50,000 jobs could be lost over the next three years if a
100 percent tariff is placed on Chinese solar panels. Yet from
where I'm sitting, I see a far different number from the same
report: The industry could add 15,000 jobs by 2014.
Those numbers don’t add up, right? Well, they do, but
it’s all a matter of perspective, and how you look at
the assumptions.
The research team took three years and three separate
expeditions at various times of year to study this complex web,
using techniques ranging from net sampling to hydro-acoustics.
...showed that this region has some of the strongest carbon
dioxide (CO2) absorption rates compared to the rest of the
Southern Ocean. When more carbon dioxide is absorbed by the
ocean from the air, it can disrupt the natural balance of marine
life and upset the food web. This is because while the oceans
can help mitigate global warming by absorbing CO2, excessive
dissolved CO2 can have a negative effect on marine life.
Energy efficiency offers one of the best tools for tackling
the world's debt and social crises as sustainable development
comes in from the margins to the mainstream of economic debate,
the European Union's climate chief said on Tuesday.
Plato’s Republic defined the noble lie as a myth or
an untruth told by the elite to preserve social harmony or the
position of the elite. It’s a lie that those who govern choose
to tell under the delusion that they’re doing so for the greater
good.
One dollar per watt: that's the mark the solar industry is
hoping to hit in order to become cost-competitive with
conventional energies. In a bid to reach this magic number in
the next two years, various Asian manufacturers are striving to
reduce costs by increasing volume production. An alternative
direction that will benefit the industry in the long term is to
target increased efficiencies primarily through new
manufacturing processes, new higher-quality materials for
metallization and changing the structure of the cell.
Admittedly, use of the term "nano" may be stretching things a
bit, but even so, the capable little robots provide an
interesting glimpse into what the future may hold for
surveillance, search and rescue, light construction and warfare.
Consumer confidence declined to 61.1 in January 2012 from the
eight-month high of 64.8 seen in December 2011. The present
situation index fell 8.1 points to 38.4, while the expectations
component edged down 0.8 points to 76.2.
The federal deficit will approach $1.1 trillion this
year, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday, down
substantially from the worst days of the Great Recession.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the gap
between government spending and tax collections would narrow
even more dramatically in 2013 unless lawmakers head off
controversial changes in tax policy and government spending that
are now on the books.
Even as the Obama administration says it’s close to defeating
Al Qaeda, the size of the government’s secret list of suspected
terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United
States has more than doubled in the past year, The Associated
Press has learned.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Bank of
Japan (BOJ) jointly organised a high-level seminar on "The
development of regional capital markets" in Yokohama, Japan, on
21-22 November 2011. The seminar brought together senior
officials of 12 central banks in Asia and the Pacific, the
European Central Bank, the Bank of Mexico, the Bank of England
and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as well as an academic
and a private sector participant.
Biodiversity loss is probably a challenge that is often
ignored as climate change looms. Currently the world is losing
species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the
natural extinction rate, further, it is currently seeing the
sixth mass extinction.
Patients liken hot chemotherapy to “being filleted,
disemboweled, and then bathed in hot poison.” Best patient care,
or merely the biggest moneymaker?
Many people are unaware of the vast amount of chemicals
lurking in nearly all public water supplies. If you are using
tap water to cook your food, or drinking it straight from the
faucet, then you are exposing yourself to these substances. One
of the most commonly noted, controversial substances in the
water supply is fluoride.
The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough
food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing
population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into
poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.
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