PM Evaluation of Hydrogen From Water In Your Fuel Tank

Popular Mechanics and Dateline NBC get together to test hydrogen generators, fuel heaters, fuel line magnets, and acetone fuel additives. Some of the commentors are not completely won over.

Josh Simpson Exhibition at the KMA

An exhibition of glass artist Josh Simpson is currently open at the Knoxville Museum of Art and will last until April 19. Josh is well known for his Planet pieces. Pam bought me a small one back in 1992. Within the last year, PBS has featured Simpson in a documentary about his unique glass working techniques. All of his work is fascinating and I would encourage everyone in our area to come and enjoy some of his work.

TMI Anniversary

Yesterday (March 28) was the 30th anniversary of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant incident. It was essentially a financial disaster. It was also a public relations disaster.

The extend of the disaster was due to humans interfering with automatic reactor safety systems. Much was learned and applied to existing and future nuclear power reactors in the following two decades.

Now it appears that the nuclear power industry is on the verge of a nuclear renaissance. At least that's what we've been hearing and reading for the last 6 years or so. Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe gives us his take.

Tesla Model S

Here is the first public look at Tesla's stunning Model S. After the federal tax credit, the price is around $49,900 and is slated to me on the market by 2011. It may go up to 300 miles per charge.

This could be a breakthrough for Tesla Motor Company. I'm rooting for them.

Emerging Technological Black Swans

The guys over at Next Big Future have posted a good summary of some recent technical breakthroughs that they classify as Black Swans.

The Black Swan theory refers to large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realms of normal expectations.

Cold fusion and Blacklight Power are included in this list among other areas such as quantum computers, DNA nanotechnology, etc.

Outliers

I'm currently reading a very interesting book authored by Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers: The Story of Success." Gladwell has also authored "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference" and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking."

I cannot recommend this author strongly enough. He writes clearly and with some humor. Basically his theme is about secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. This is very useful information that everyone should find fascinating.

Cold Fusion Experimentally Confirmed

At the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Portland, OR the U.S. Navy researchers presented a paper that shows evidence of highly energetic neutrons from cold fusion reactions.

Everyone remembers the press conference in 1989 by Pons and Fleischmann with the first big announcement on cold fusion? Other researchers were not able to reproduce the results so Pons and Fleischmann were 'tarred and feathered' in the media and the scientific community.

It is interesting that the research money for cold fusion never actually dried up in the last 20 years. In fact, the Dept. of Energy kept funding available for further research, although this was kept as a low-profile budget item.

It appears that the key to this week's announcement was difficulty in detecting the low-energy neutron reactions.

It is difficult to predict the fusion energy reprocussions from this breakthrough. My guess is the theortetical implications may be the most ground breaking. Who knows, this may actually lead to something big for the electric power industry. Time will tell.

Irradiated Food

Here is something I found today that I'm passing on as consumer information. It is the new symbol for irradiated food.

I am not opposed to using a gamma-ray source for killing microbes in our food. I do think that consumers have the right to know that this process has been used on food that they choose or not choose to purchase.

Food exposed to gamma-rays does not make food radioactive, just like exposing food to microwaves. The controversy is about what happens to the molecular bonds as a result of the exposure. What kind of reactive chemical species are produced and what potential harm can they induce in the human body that is different from that produced in regular cooking?

There is no question that biologically contaminated food is a serious health risk. Corporate farming and food processing has it's own set of issues that are far from perfect, but as a whole, food is fairly safe in this country. Food from other countries presents even more challenges.

Preservation of food for the duration of harvesting, transporting, and retailing is another big issue. Irradiation gives food a much longer 'shelf life.' I think the other major question is whether this causes significant loss of nutrition. Even without irradiation, long periods been harvest and consumption results in nutritional breakdown and oxidation.

In a nutshell, fresh is better. Local is fresher. We would all be a little better off with a vegetable garden and some fruit trees.

Sponsor An Executive

Click here to learn more about sponsoring an executive. Let's all do our part.

American Demographics

This statement grabbed my attention: "More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than in any year of the nation's history".

Tips On Buying a "Green" Car

Here is a good analysis on buying a new automobile with some good insight on green vehicles.

Spin Battery

How about a battery that can be charged by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction. This could lead to making hard drives with no moving parts. Down the road, electric cars could benefit.

More on the Nuclear Spent Fuel Issue

Electrical utilities with nuclear power plants are beginning to work on some near-term solutions in dealing with spent fuel assemblies.

There are viable options for this problem. France is dealing with this issue. We can too. Ultimately, we need to consider a full blow fuel recycling system while we work on fusion and other energy technologies.

Latest On Laser Fusion Research

Thomas Friedman made a visit to the recently completed National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and describes the concept of using 192 giant lasers to create a fusion reaction with a small pellet of frozen hydrogen.

Storage of Spent Fuel at Nuke Plants Seen as a Security Risk

Now the utilities will begin to deal with the consequences of the Yucca Mountain Disposal Site funding cut. This is just the delay of the inevitable.

A positive aspect of this is the opportunity for reimplementing the fuel recycling program that was cut during the Carter Administration.

The Food Police Bill - HR 875

HR 875 is still in committee, but it isn't getting much exposure. This is nuts. It needs to be stopped.

Entrepreneurship, not the government, will produce green jobs

The green building industry is one aspect of the economy that may be relatively recession-proof.

Some Bright Spots In The Job Market

It is not all doom and gloom in the American job market. It is a good time to have skills as a pharmacist, an engineer, a nurse, and a veterinarian. Everyone just needs to keep their eyes and ears open for opportunity. Typically, when one door closes, another door opens.

One Trillion Dollars

What does 1 trillion dollars look like? Click here for a visual representation. The example begins with the lowly 100 dollar bill. Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?

Tesla Roadster Road Test

Wired magazine gets the privilege to test drive the Tesla Roadster. They liked it but stated that the owners will need to learn to drive a bit differently due to some characteristics of the electric motor and drive train. The only thing that really bugged the Wired guy was the lack of noise. They suggested a 'space sound generator' that mimics the sound of a V-8 engine.

Swedish Solar Car Runs on Fool's Gold

Koenigsegg of Sweden has developed a concept electric car that uses solar energy via pyrite (fool's gold), due to it's tremendous photovoltaic properties, that has a range of 300 miles and can recharge in 20 minutes. It is being shown at the Geneva Motor Show.

Flight Patterns

Artist Aaron Koblin has constructed a Google map image representing air traffic over a 24-hr period over the USA. There were 205,000 aircraft tracked on Aug. 12, 2008.

This is amazing!

Here is a comment left by a viewer on the Wired page:

"near the day of purification cobwebs will be spun back and forth in the sky"- Hopi prophecy

Solar Panel Drops to $1 per Watt

An Arizona solar panel firm announced that the manufacturing costs for its thin-film photovoltaic panels has dipped below $1 for the first time. Comparable panels are in the $3 range. Don't expect it to get much cheaper any time soon. Even with this success, the company and many of its competitors are taking hits in the markets.

Some long-term thinking and research is needed and it needs to start now. It will not be cheap but it will be much more costly if we wait.