KEELEYNETSAMPLER

3
02/19/06 - High Efficiency Solar Cell breakthrough
In a scientific breakthrough that has stunned the world, a team of South African scientists has developed a revolutionary new, highly efficient solar power technology that will enable homes to obtain all their electricity from the sun. The unique South African-developed solar panels will make it possible for houses to become completely self-sufficient for energy supplies. The panels are able to generate enough energy to run stoves, geysers, lights, TVs, fridges, computers - in short all the mod-cons of the modern house. The new technology should be available in South Africa within a year and through a special converter, energy can be fed directly into the wiring of existing houses. New powerful storage units will allow energy storage to meet demands even in winter. The panels are so efficient they can operate through a Cape Town winter. while direct sunlight is ideal for high-energy generation, other daytime light also generates energy via the panels. A team of scientists led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) scientist Professor Vivian Alberts achieved the breakthrough after 10 years of research. The South African technology has now been patented across the world. International experts have admitted that nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the South African invention. The South African solar panels consist of a thin layer of a unique metal alloy that converts light into energy. The photo-responsive alloy can operate on virtually all flexible surfaces, which means it could in future find a host of other applications. Alberts said the new panels are approximately five microns thick (a human hair is 20 microns thick) while the older silicon panels are 350 microns thick. the cost of the South African technology is a fraction of the less effective silicone solar panels.

4
02/22/06 - Chatter Bug - Unlimited Long Distance, $9.95/Month, No PC
A small company will ship next month a tiny device that clips onto any phone line, offering unlimited long-distance calls to any number in the U.S. and Canada for only $9.95 per month. Best of all, the device uses VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), but doesn't require broadband access -- or any kind of computer at all. You might say, "So what? I can download Skype software and make calls for nothing per month." The advantages of the new device, however, will make it an attractive choice for many consumers and businesses. Allow me to explain. The gizmo is called the Chatter Bug. It's a product of Lagunawave.com, a company in Tucson, Ariz., that previously sold high-speed Internet access through Sam's Club and other retail outlets. If you have a local phone line, the device represents a new way to think about long-distance, which I call "VoIP over dialup." No computer, DSL, Cable, broadband or Internet connection needed. Unlimited long distance phone calls to the US and to Canada for $9.95 per month. $9.95 Low monthly rate includes: no contracts, cancel service at any time, no unexpected charges, no calling cards to buy, no "800" or pin numbers to remember. Just plug into your existing home touch tone phone and existing local service. $24.95 for the Chatter Bug and $9.95 a month for the service. Details and Ordering

5
02/21/06 - Recover Scratched CDs with Toothpaste
If you’ve ever owned a CD or DVD, you’ve certainly had to deal with scratched up, unreadable media. Hardware Secrets has a simple solution: a scratched CD can be recovered by polishing its plastic surface. If, after carrying out the above cleansing, the CD persists in giving reading errors, just polish the CD with toothpaste. That’s right, toothpaste. It works wonders, and you won’t spend a fortune buying professional cleaning kits. Having learned this trick in college, I can vouch for it. Don’t expect to recover your most damaged CDs, but you certainly can work a little magic. (via lifehacker.com)


6
02/20/06 - Claim of invention for Chaining Maxwell's Demon
This is an experiment report on a special energy conversion. Two similar and parallel Ag-O-Cs cathodes in a vacuum tube eject electrons at room temperature continuously. A static magnetic field applied to the tube plays the role of the famous "Maxwell's demon". The thermal electrons are so controlled by the magnetic field that they can fly only from one cathode to the other, resulting in a charge collection and an electric potential. A load, a resistance for example, is connected to the cathodes, getting an electric power from the tube continuously. Here, the air within the laboratory is a single heat reservoir and all of the heat extracted by the electronic tube from the reservior is converted into electric energy, without producting any other effects. The Authors believe that the experiment is in contradiction to Kelvin's statement of the second law of thermodynamics. To better understand how the Demon works, play either of these two JAVA applets, Maxwell's Demon Game #1 (with yellow background and better explanation) or Maxwell's Demon Game #2 (with black background).


7
02/20/06 - Clean water from Solar Power
EnergyQuest, Inc. will be testing its new portable solar powered water purification technology near El Paso, Texas at an agricultural testing facility operated by the Texas Water Resources Institute of Texas A & M as early as February 2006. The system purifies water using only solar power. It is easy to store and portable making it invaluable for use in providing drinking water during disaster relief efforts. The system also has promising applications for agriculture in areas where water is brackish or unsuitable for crop development. The system purifies water while also reserving for future use or sale, any minerals or other useable by-products collected during the purification process, such as sea salt from an ocean water source.
8
02/20/06 - Claim of Sleep Inducing Machine
EarthPulse Sleep On Command® emits sequences of electromagnetic waves at tempos that gently tune down the mind and body enabling just about anyone to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Sleep On Command® magnetic waves are sequenced to intentionally guide consciousness toward deep sleep. 9 out of 10 clients sleep far better the very first night of use without any of the drawbacks of sleep medication. Instead of waking groggy, the built in timer tunes the user back to an alert mind state prior to their alarm clock ringing. Once a small digitally controlled disk is placed under any mattress, it turns that bed into the world’s first electromagnetic sleep machine. The device is small and portable, and solves the problem of jet lag when traveling. To investigate whether EarthPulse® could improve the sleep of chronic lower back pain patients, the founder of an Ivy League University Hospital Pain Center conducted two informal pilot evaluations that indicated EarthPulse significantly improved sleep quality in over 80% of participants. EarthPulse Sleep On Command® is affordably priced at around US$500 and sold with a 90 day satisfaction guarantee. Deep sleep in the EarthPulse® field triggers a host of recognizable effects like enhanced strength and stamina, better mental focus and improved flexibility.
9
02/23/06 - New Walkman-type device to lower blood pressure
Scientists have developed a gadget that can lower blood pressure without the need for drugs. The device, which looks like a CDWalkman, helps open up blood vessels that have become narrowed, causing a build-up of pressure. Within days of starting on the machine, patients with high BP have reported dramatic drops. Resperate, which has been approved by the US FDA, is an interactive device that uses musical cues to encourage patients to alter their breathing. The device works by picking up the breathing rate of a patient through a sensor worn on a belt round the chest. Once the device has worked out the patient's resting breathing rate, it creates an individual programme to guide it from, on average, 18 breaths a minute to 10, using calming music to encourage slower breathing. Research has shown that just by making breathing slower and deeper, more oxygen is taken into the lungs and muscles surrounding blood vessels. If enough oxygen is not reaching these muscles they constrict, causing high blood pressure. Once the muscles relax, blood pressure is reduced.

10
02/23/06 - Heal warts with duct tape
When I was younger (early teens), I had a wart on one of my toes that wouldn’t go away for years. I saw a podiatrist and a dermatologist, each of which took several turns dousing it with acid, freezing it, scraping it, injecting who-knows-what into it, and sprinkling it with Holy water to no effect - I’d even tried every single over-the-counter wart remedy they made; this sucker would not die. One day my dad came home from the pharmacist with some peculiar advice: duct tape. My first thought was that he meant to affix duct tape to it, then rip it off like a leg waxing; “ouch”. No, he meant to put duct tape on the thing and leave it there. So, I started wrapping duct tape around the toe and leaving it there. Every week I’d snip it off, soak the foot in soapy water, then add another strip of duct tape. In a month, the monster was half its usual size. In two months, it was completely gone. Imagine that. Fourteen flavors of acid accomplished nothing, and duct tape solves it.

11
02/25/06 - Split Second 3D Imaging
EW technology which can recognise a face in a split second has been developed by computer scientists at Sheffield Hallam University. The software, which could revolutionise security systems worldwide, can produce an exact 3D image of a face within 40 milliseconds. Other systems have previously tried and failed to perform the feat - they took too long to construct a picture and produced an inaccurate result. Hallam's groundbreaking invention could be in use soon to tighten security in airports, banks, government buildings - and to produce ID cards. With legislation just passed to bring in ID cards from 2008 when passport applications are made, the software could come into its own. The new technology works by projecting a pattern of light onto a face, creating a two dimensional image from which 3D data is generated. The Hallam team behind the research believe no other system in the world can match their technology for speed and accuracy of information, taken from a single video frame. Professor Rodrigues said there were also implications for industrial inspections, medical engineering, archaeology and even entertainment. "The system means we can make a 3D scan of a moving object, such as a person speaking," he said. "The combination of facial data and recorded speech would enable a speaking 3D model to be displayed together."

12
02/25/06 - Free Hard Drive Health Monitor
Freeware HDD Health monitors your PC’s hard drives for errors that predict an impending hard drive crash. HDD Health uses Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), which is built into all new hard disks to keep tabs on how your drive is doing. HDD Health also watches your hard drive’s temperature and sends you an alert email if it gets too hot or if the status changes to anything except “All’s well on the Western Digital front.” Free download, Windows only.




13
02/23/06 - Transparent Hybrid Canoe/Kayak
(This really has no place here, but I am a fan of canoeing/kayaking and would love to try this out! - JWD) This kayak/canoe hybrid has a transparent polymer hull that offers paddlers an underwater vista of aquatic wildlife and waterscapes unavailable in conventional boats. Seating two people, the sturdy canoe hull is made of the same durable material found in the cockpit canopies of supersonic fighter jets. Easy to maneuver, the wide canoe displaces a greater amount of water for more surface stability, and the paddlers sit lower to the deck, resulting in better balance. Adjustable seats allow paddlers of different heights to personalize their leg room. With a lightweight anodized aluminum frame, it can be easily stored or transported to and from the water. Includes two double-headed paddles, a water bailer, and two flotation devices. For ages 16 and up with parental supervision on calm water and while wearing a U.S. Coastguard-approved life vest. Weight capacity 425 pounds.

14
02/23/06 - Store bought meats dosed to look red
The newer the redder, brown is an elderly hue, which of these steaks looks fresher to you? It’s a trick question as both were bought on the same date but one was dosed with carbon monoxide (CO), a technique that’s angering consumer advocacy groups. Supermarkets are trimming out their in-store butchers and buying pre-packaged cuts direct from the processing plants. The increasingly widespread use of “modified atmosphere packaging” replaces the oxygen inside with other gases, especially CO. Doing so makes the meat rosier. Customers buy meat mainly on how it looks. Better looking meat has a longer purchasability. “Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, says one study found that when meat in modified packages that included carbon monoxide was stored at 10 degrees above the proper temperature, salmonella grew more easily.”




15
02/23/06 - Umbilical blood can cure 100 diseases
The stem cell is an immortal cell that is able to produce all the cells within an organ. The term is most usually applied to the hemopoetic stem cells of the bone marrow. Patents were reported to have recovered from the harmful effects of radiation after doctors transplanted a donor bone marrow to them. Later researchers learned how to secrete stem cells from the bone marrow. Then researchers found a way of secreting stem cells from the blood of an umbilical cord. The number of stem cells decreases as man grows older. For example, a 50-year-old human being has approximately 100 thousand stem cells. Now it is believed that stem cells from umbilical blood can be used for treating more than a hundred diseases. Today we inject the stem cells into a patient’s body in the hope to get them working on a damaged organ by transforming into cardiomyocytes in case of a myocardial infarction, or into hepatocytes in patients with cirrhosis. The diseases treatable with stem cells include certain kinds of leucosis, certain malignant tumors, which are usually incompatible with life. The stem cells can be used very effectively for treating strokes, myocardial infarctions, diabetes, chronic cirrhosis.

15
02/23/06 - WTO Forcing Unsafe GE Food on Consumers
The World Trade Organisation- already under pressure for failing to deliver it's trade objectives- could fall apart if it insists on forcing GE foods on countries around the world. An initial WTO decision backing the US and a handful of countries in their efforts to force European nations to import GE foods is likely to prompt a backlash from consumers, growers and manufacturers as they fight to protect basic rights. "On the surface the decision is a terrible one for food safety, the consumers' right to choose and national sovereignty," says Jon Carapiet from GE Free NZ. "But the decision is such a fundamental attack on the integrity of the global food system that the international backlash could result in the collapse of the WTO". Consumers have previously been promised by the Biotech industry and governments that people will have a choice to avoid GE foods. But the WTO decision sounds alarmingly like a means of enforcing a "New World Order" that literally forces people to eat food they do not want in order to serve the interests of multinational corporations intent on dominating the food suppply. It is important to remember that the US government's own scientists advised against approval of GE foods under the current regulatory regime but were deliberately ignored. Evidence continues to mount of harm caused by some GE products already in use. The absence of a global agreement on testing methodologies for such foods has prompted the British Medical Association and other medical professionals to warn that the young, the elderly, people with reduced immunity, pregnant women, and unborn children are all particularly at risk.

16
02/22/06 - Energy Intensifier
(This is an interesting series of pages though the writer seems to be a fan of the notorious Dennis Lee. In going through various pages, this 'intensifier' grabbed my attention as I have heard of such a design for many years and never found any details. The design looks like a standard hydraulic chamber which was in my college textbook. Here is a description of the 'energy intensifier that might explain his version of it a little better. Thanks to Paul Carlson for the headsup. - JWD) The rocket scientist was awed by Mr. Mentor's invention. He said that there were numerous “wrong turns” that his engine design could have taken, and that he estimated that Mr. Mentor’s engine should have taken a team of engineers twenty years to design. It came to him in a flash at a stoplight. The engine was an external combustion engine, not an internal combustion engine, meaning that the combustion took place outside the engine and not inside it, as with a car engine. The working fluid began its journey in a boiler. The boiler was subjected to a flame created by burning the fuel. As the working fluid boiled, the gas expanded and left the boiler through a pipe. The working fluid’s steam then met what Mr. Mentor called a pressure intensifier, which was one of his engine’s major innovations. The principle of the pressure intensifier was that high-pressure steam would come from the boiler and meet the piston head (area A in the drawing). As it pushed the piston down, it gave its energy to the piston, becoming a cooler gas at a lower pressure as it left the cylinder. The boiling point of any substance is determined by the attraction of the molecules to each other, and the temperature and the pressure it is subjected to. A pot of water, for instance, boils at 212° F at sea level on earth, but at less than 150° F on top of Mount Everest. If we put water in a jar and hook up a vacuum pump to create a vacuum, the water will boil at room temperature. The fluid that left the boiler was turned into steam by the heat applied by the flame. It gave energy picked up in the boiler to the piston, as it pushed it down. It left the cylinder cooler and at less pressure, which was closer to its condensing point than when it entered the cylinder. The journey of the working fluid makes its way to the piston’s other side in the pressure intensifier (area B in my drawing). The amount of force exerted by the piston is easily calculated, and is the pressure of the gas multiplied by the piston head’s surface. If the gas pressure was 100 PSI and the piston head’s surface area was 10 square inches, 1000 pounds of force would be applied to the piston (100 X 10) on side A. On the piston’s other side is another head. The pressure the piston exerted on the steam in area B would be the force exerted divided by the surface area of the piston’s head. So, if the piston’s other head was only two square inches in area, and 1000 pounds of pressure were exerted, the pressure the gas would be subjected to would be 500 PSI (1000 / 2). By knowing the pressure of the working fluid leaving the boiler (mainly determined by the boiler’s temperature), and adjusting the surface areas of both heads of the piston, any desired pressure could be applied to the working fluid in the back end of the cylinder. At a certain pressure and temperature, the working fluid would re-condense.

17
02/22/06 - Focusing incoming Waves for Power Plant
Pioneered by scientists at Energetech, a small alternative-energy company in Randwick, Australia, a prototype of the $1.5-million device is now in testing off the Australian coast, and Energetech hopes to build another one near Rhode Island by 2007. Moored several miles offshore, Energetech's 40-foot-tall rig relies on the up-and-down motion of waves to force air in and out of a chamber, turning a turbine that produces electricity. The company's president, Tom Engelsman, says that a full-scale unit could power up to 5,000 homes; the output depends on the size and regularity of the swells. But recent theoretical work of two Chinese scientists on amplifying wave energy could soon make devices like Energetech's even more effective. The height of a wave increases as it moves into shallower water-that's why waves get steeper as they approach the sand. According to scientists Xinhua Hu of Iowa State University and Che Ting Chan of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a football-field-size array of solid columns, situated some 300 feet from the rig, could effectively act as a false ocean bottom. The part of the wave that flows through the columns would behave as if it had reached the shallows, doubling in height. When the trough of the wave passes beneath the chamber, air is sucked downward [see diagram,facing page]. Then, as its peak rolls through, air is forced back up, spinning the turbine faster. Bigger waves mean more airflow and, according to Engelsman, "The more air you pump through, the more energy you get." A generator converts the mechanical energy of the spinning turbine into electricity, which flows by way of an underground cable to a power station that hooks up to the main grid onshore. If the Rhode Island project is approved, it will produce two megawatts of power a year, enough to power 1,200 homes.

18
02/22/06 - India - New technology to generate hydrogen
The Polymer Electrolyte Membrane-based hydrogen generator breaks down water into hydrogen and oxygen, and hydrogen is separated by a polymer membrane. ‘‘This membrane is selective and permits only hydrogen to pass through,’’ said TIFAC principal scientific officer P R Basak who is here to see the smooth conduct of the field trial. ‘The generator can even be redesigned to run on solar energy,’’ said Kerala Science Council for Science Technology and Environment director K R S Krishnan. ‘‘This will make hydrogen a clean green competitor to oil,’’ he said. These generators, can be an alternative to the traditional cannon-like hydrogen generators.

19
02/22/06 - New Hydrogen Extractor
A team at CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology has developed a small hydrogen device, the size of a domestic microwave oven, to fuel a family car. The device can extract enough hydrogen per day from water to power a family car for up to 150km. Currently, the hydrogen unit runs on main's power, but researchers are investigating how to power the unit with renewable energy, such as solar and wind power. While the idea of fuelling your car with hydrogen generated from a solar panel might sound like science fiction, project leader Dr Sukhvinder Badwal says concepts such as the hydrogen economy are real possibilities.

20
02/21/06 - 6,500-Year-Old Voices Recorded In Pottery
(Reminds me of a couple of 'Science Fiction Theater' episodes, using a slow curing crystalline material to capture sound and cooling lava that captured sound and video. - JWD) Belgian researchers have been able to use computer scans of the grooves in 6,500-year-old pottery to extract sounds -- including talking and laughter -- made by the vibrations of the tools used to make the pottery. Here comes the VIDEO (the interviews are in French, but you'll hear the pottery recordings as well). (via therawfeed.com)





21
02/21/06 - Things you don't want Google to find
McAfee Senior Vice President for Risk Management George Kurtz demonstrated at the RSA conference in Silicon Valley yesterday how easy it is to find CONFIDENTIAL PASSWORD FILES and other secret stuff using Google. Kurtz demonstrated today at RSA conference, that protection software didn't prevent users and organisations to post those goodies online for anyone to find. "You almost get bored finding all these password files. It used to be fun in the old days when you found a password file. Now you just go to Google and find thousands of them," Kurtz said. So you removed that file with the password, but did you think about Google cache? Yes, that's the management interface for a Netgear router that was found using Google. It still had the default login and password settings. What more do you want? Search for sites with "Remote desktop web connection" in the title, and you'll find... remote desktops that you can take over. If the user sees you taking over, simply say that you're the system administrator working to bolster the user's security. Kurtz did that once during a security audit and it worked well.