| To: axial who wrote (41284) | 8/15/2012 5:24:08 AM | | From: LindyBill | | | | quantum teleportation
I am losing it with this. Sounds like magic. If this engineers out, are we looking at wireless transmission of data in volume? Where does it lead? |
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| To: axial who wrote (41284) | 8/15/2012 1:30:48 PM | | From: pltodms | | | | "demonstrated entanglement between two receivers separated by 101.8 km"
This is phenomenal, Jim.
Regardless of imminent practical applications (or not) with this successful test, it validates some profound insights into quantum theory. Like any new piece of evidence substantiating scientific theories, who can say what it could lead to. Likewise with the recent discovery of the Higgs particle.
If we lose the wonder of discovery and relegate all our actions to bottom line effectiveness, we lose our humanity. |
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| From: pltodms | 8/15/2012 1:57:20 PM | | | | | | Martian Computing Is Light on RAM, Heavy on Radiation Shielding
"But down on Earth, bit flipping is something that’s taken very seriously by the scientists like Geist, who run massive supercomputers. These systems fill up huge amounts of memory — a large target for the cosmic rays — and they run precise calculations that simply can’t have any errors.
And without the radiation hardening techniques cooked up by people such as Sridharan, these supercomputers simply wouldn’t work."
wired.com
[how intricately we are tied to the subatomic, quantum world... e.g. HFT??] |
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| From: LindyBill | 8/15/2012 8:09:57 PM | | | | | | Tiburon, the Town Where They Always Know Your Name
from Reason.com Full Feed by J.D. Tuccille
 In what is the most detailed article about license-plate scanners that I've seen to-date, Ars Technica starts with a report on how up-scale Tiburon, California, scans every car that transits the two roads into town, and then discusses the legal ramifications and potential risks of the technology. It's really an excellent piece and well worth a read to gain a good grasp of where we're likely to go as plate scanners pop up hither and yon, and what that's likely to mean for our privacy in terms of enhanced law-enforcement, government intrusions and abuses.
For starters, Cyrus Farivar writes:
Tiburon, a small but wealthy town just northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge, has an unusual distinction: it was one of the first towns in the country to mount automated license plate readers (LPRs) at its city borders—the only two roads going in and out of town. Effectively, that means the cops are keeping an eye on every car coming and going.
A contentious plan? Not in Tiburon, where the city council approved the cameras unanimously back in November 2009.
The scanners can read 60 license plates per second, then match observed plates against a "hot list" of wanted vehicles, stolen cars, or criminal suspects. LPRs have increasingly become a mainstay of law enforcement nationwide; many agencies tout them as a highly effective "force multiplier" for catching bad guys, most notably burglars, car thieves, child molesters, kidnappers, terrorists, and—potentially—undocumented immigrants.
There's a high creepy factor for those of us inclined in that direction, but the town boasts of some benefits that we'll have to take at face value.
Cronin explained that in a town like Tiburon, where the biggest criminal concern is property crime, knowing who is coming and going at odd hours has been very helpful to the squad. The chief added that, prior to deploying the cameras, crime was still relatively low—only about 100 to 120 thefts per year, he said. Since the cameras have been in place, that figure has dropped by "around a third," he said.
For intelligent, systematic criminals, I can easily see how license-plate scanners would be a deterrent. So would any intrusive tracking technology. Still, the town's police concede the risks.
[T]he system is not without flaws. It tends to yield numerous false positives because the hot list data received from the California Department of Motor Vehicles takes a long time to be updated—and because the system cannot distinguish out-of-state plates. This creates a problem if, for instance, California plate ABC123 has been reported as stolen and is on the hotlist, and then someone drives through Tiburon with Oregon plate ABC123. (Other LPR systems can distinguish the plates from different states.) ...
And he recognizes the system's easy susceptibility to abuse. "We could put our boss's plates in the system and every time she leaves town we could go get her golf clubs," he joked.
To prevent problems, only Cronin and Hutton can add plates to the hot list. Each time a plate is run for historical data by either an officer or requested by an outside agency, the requester has to inform the chief by e-mail. Requests are tallied in an annual report for the town council.
Elsewhere, as the article details, false positives have had some unpleasant outcomes. including a woman ordered out of her car at gunpoint in San Francisco in a stop later upheld by the courts. And license-plate tracking has also helped solve crimes, including a murder in New York.
As I've written and said on television, I have serious concerns about this technology. I have no doubt that it can help solve crimes. The same could be said of random home searches. But I think the dangers and likely abuses outweigh any potential gains.
But go read the Ars Technica piece and decide for yourself.
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| From: pltodms | 8/15/2012 8:48:13 PM | | | | | | U.S. WIND ENERGY PRODUCTION AND MANUFACTURING SURGE
Aug 15, 2012 11:58 AM
The Energy Department released a new report yesterday highlighting strong growth in the U.S. wind energy market in 2011. According to the 2011 Wind Technologies Market Report, the United States remained one of the world’s largest and fastest growing wind markets in 2011, with wind power representing 32 percent of all new electric capacity additions in the United States last year and accounting for $14 billion in new investment. According the report, the percentage of wind equipment made in America also increased dramatically. Nearly 70% of the equipment installed at U.S. wind farms last year – including wind turbines and components like towers, blades, gears, and generators - is now from domestic manufacturers, doubling from 35 percent in 2005.
The report finds that in 2011, roughly 6,800 MW of new wind power capacity was added to the U.S. grid, a 31 percent increase from 2010 installations. The United States’ wind power capacity reached 47,000 MW by the end of 2011 and has since grown to 50,000 MW, enough electricity to power 13 million homes annually or as many as in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama, and Connecticut combined. The country’s cumulative installed wind energy capacity grew 16 percent from 2010, and has increased more than18-fold since 2000. The report also finds that six states now meet more than 10 percent of their total electricity needs with wind power.
The growth in the industry has also led directly to more American jobs throughout a number of sectors and at factories across the country. According to industry estimates, the wind sector employs 75,000 American workers, including workers at manufacturing facilities up and down the supply chain, as well as engineers and construction workers who build and operate the wind farms.
Technical innovation allowing for larger wind turbines with longer, lighter blades has steadily improved wind turbine performance and increased the efficiency of power generation from wind energy. At the same time, wind project capital and maintenance costs continue to decline, driving U.S. manufacturing competitiveness on the global market. For new wind projects deployed last year, the price of wind under long-term power purchase contracts with utilities averaged 40 percent lower than in 2010 and about 50 percent lower than in 2009, making wind competitive with a range of wholesale power prices seen in 2011.
Despite these recent technical and infrastructure improvements and continued growth in 2012, the report finds that 2013 may see a slowing of domestic wind energy deployment due in part to the possible expiration of federal renewable energy tax incentives. The Production Tax Credit (PTC), which provides a tax credit to wind producers in the United States, is set to expire at the end of this year. Working in tandem with the PTC, the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit provides a 30 percent investment credit to manufacturers who invest in capital equipment to make components for clean energy projects in the United States.
Read more: tdworld.com@cirrant.com&YM_MID=1333085#ixzz23fJlADq3
[see map at: energy.gov & energy.gov -- the second link relates to earlier posts discussing training. ]
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Impacts of Wind Generation Integration
tdworld.com
tdworld.com |
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| To: pltodms who wrote (41287) | 8/16/2012 1:34:32 AM | | From: axial | | | | Hi Plato - 'There oughta be a law.' Who says?
'According to Albert Einstein: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, is that it is comprehensible." - While it does not appear all that comprehensible to me, it certainly seems surprising that the laws of physics are as simple and straightforward as they are, even when they are at odds with our intuition. When you think about it: is it not surprising that there should be any laws of physics?'
zenker.se
Jim ;) |
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| From: Frank A. Coluccio | 8/16/2012 9:36:42 AM | | | | | | Builders and Architects Quibble over $20 MM Locker Room Measurement Stakes
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Slide show: One World Trade Center’s Skinny Spire Redesign Might Not Measure Up
August 15, 2012
Image courtesy Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
archrecord.construction.com
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| From: Cautious_Optimist | 8/16/2012 9:47:00 AM | | | | | | News
Major Advance Made In Generating Electricity From Wastewater August 13, 2012
 Engineers at Oregon State University have made a breakthrough in the performance of microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell excess electricity.
The new technology developed at OSU can now produce 10 to 50 more times the electricity, per volume, than most other approaches using microbial fuel cells, and 100 times more electricity than some.
Researchers say this could eventually change the way that wastewater is treated all over the world, replacing the widely used “activated sludge” process that has been in use for almost a century. The new approach would produce significant amounts of electricity while effectively cleaning the wastewater.
The findings have just been published in Energy and Environmental Science, a professional journal, in work funded by the National Science Foundation.
“If this technology works on a commercial scale the way we believe it will, the treatment of wastewater could be a huge energy producer, not a huge energy cost,” said Hong Liu, an associate professor in the OSU Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering. “This could have an impact around the world, save a great deal of money, provide better water treatment and promote energy sustainability.”
Experts estimate that about 3 percent of the electrical energy consumed in the United States and other developed countries is used to treat wastewater, and a majority of that electricity is produced by fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.
But the biodegradable characteristics of wastewater, if tapped to their full potential, could theoretically provide many times the energy that is now being used to process them, with no additional greenhouse emissions.
OSU researchers reported several years ago on the promise of this technology, but at that time the systems in use produced far less electrical power. With new concepts – reduced anode-cathode spacing, evolved microbes and new separator materials – the technology can now produce more than two kilowatts per cubic meter of liquid reactor volume. This amount of power density far exceeds anything else done with microbial fuel cells.
The system also works better than an alternative approach to creating electricity from wastewater, based on anaerobic digestion that produces methane. It treats the wastewater more effectively, and doesn’t have any of the environmental drawbacks of that technology, such as production of unwanted hydrogen sulfide or possible release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The OSU system has now been proven at a substantial scale in the laboratory, Liu said, and the next step would be a pilot study. Funding is now being sought for such a test. A good candidate, she said, might initially be a food processing plant, which is a contained system that produces a steady supply of certain types of wastewater that would provide significant amounts of electricity.
Continued research should also find even more optimal use of necessary microbes, reduced material costs and improved function of the technology at commercial scales, OSU scientists said.
Once advances are made to reduce high initial costs, researchers estimate that the capital construction costs of this new technology should be comparable to that of the activated sludge systems now in widespread use today – and even less expensive when future sales of excess electricity are factored in.
This technology cleans sewage by a very different approach than the aerobic bacteria used in the past. Bacteria oxidize the organic matter and, in the process, produce electrons that run from the anode to the cathode within the fuel cell, creating an electrical current. Almost any type of organic waste material can be used to produce electricity – not only wastewater, but also grass straw, animal waste, and byproducts from such operations as the wine, beer or dairy industries.
The approach may also have special value in developing nations, where access to electricity is limited and sewage treatment at remote sites is difficult or impossible as a result.
The ability of microbes to produce electricity has been known for decades, but only recently have technological advances made their production of electricity high enough to be of commercial use.
About the OSU College of Engineering
The OSU College of Engineering is among the nation’s largest and most productive engineering programs. In the past six years, the College has more than doubled its research expenditures to $27.5M by emphasizing highly collaborative research that solves global problems, spins out new companies, and produces opportunity for students through hands-on learning.
SOURCE: Oregon State University
http://www.wateronline.com/doc.mvc/major-advance-made-generating-electricity-from-wastewater-0001 |
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