Under-Ease are underwear for protection against bad human gas (malodorous flatus) and are made from a soft air-tight fabric (polyurethane-coated nylon). To maintain the air-tightness, elastic is sewn into the material around the waist and both legs.
A triangular "exit hole" for the flatus to be expelled is cut from the back of the air-tight underwear, near the bottom. This "exit hole" is covered with a "pocket" made of ordinary porous fabric sewn over the "exit hole". This unique design forces all expelled gas (flatus) out through the "pocket".

Inside the "pocket" is a high-functioning, replaceable filter - the core of the technology. This multi-layered filter is made in a sandwich-style, and begins with the two outer layers of wool felt. The second two layers are made of non-woven polypropylene and spun glass materials. In the center of the filter is a single layer of activated carbon.

The filter is then covered with soft ordinary material to allow for easy replacement in or out of the pocket. The underwear are washable and will last approximately a year depending on the frequency of use and laundering. Each filter will last from several weeks to several months depending on the frequency of use and laundering. (See Wear and Care)

“Today I flew the Raptor at speeds exceeding (Mach 1.7) without afterburners,” General Jumper said. “To be able to go that fast without afterburners means that nobody can get you in their sights or get a lock-on.

a new breed of ISP is popping up all around the country. They are called WISP's or Wireless ISP's. These WISP's are speading a disruptive technology that allows the delivery of high speed internet to homes and businesses via un-licensed radio spectrum.

What's the scary part for the big Telco's and Cable companies?

The WISP has no investment in copper!

No cables in the ground!

No wires to run to the house!

No sunk costs to amortize!

Most important? The system is infinitely scalable.

There is no way that the current model of business and residential telephony will survive the convergence of cheap wireless internet and cheap VOIP service.

I spoke to many of the equipment manufacturers at the show and they told me that much of the wireless internet and VOIP equipment being sold today is going to developing countries in Latin America and Asia. Many of these countries are completely bypassing copper and going straight to wireless services.

What differentiates it from a traditional motorcycle or one of Europe's ubiquitous swarms of scooters are several characteristics:

# It's silent. Imagine visiting Rome without its ''background music," the buzz of a million Vespas. ''We're talking silent not quiet," said Eggleston. ''It makes about as much noise as the fans in your desktop computer's CPU tower."

# There are no exhaust fumes, just water vapor. ''Put your hand over the exhaust vent and all you'll feel is a humid vapor," said Eggleston.

# It costs about $3 to $4 per fill-up (5 ounces of hydrogen), which is enough to transport it 100 miles. ''Once a network of fueling stations is in place, that cost should drop to something more like 25 cents," said Eggleston.

# There's no transmission, just a big belt or chain driving a big sprocket on the rear wheel. ''It'll do 0-to-30 in five seconds, 0-to-50 in 12," Eggleston said. Cut the rear sprocket to half its size and acceleration would suffer but top speed would theoretically double. ''There's no need for a transmission," he said. ''With an electric motor peak torque is at start-up. It's not a slingshot, but you'd be amazed at the acceleration."

The transmission of electricity over the in-grid superconducting power cable system started in Albany, New York State on the local date of July 20th 2006. This system at the Albany High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Cable Project (hereinafter referred to as the "Albany Project") uses high-temperature superconducting cable manufactured by Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. First in the world to be used in the practically used underground power grid, the superconducting cable system undergoes a demonstration test for the next six months. A ceremony will be held on the local date of August 2nd to celebrate the successful completion of the construction of the Albany Project HTS cable system, with honorable guests including New York's Governor Pataki. Sumitomo Electric President and CEO Masayoshi Matsumoto will also attend the ceremony.

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In the United States, under the Energy Policy enacted last year, the modernization of power grid is positioned as a national issue. The plan to construct a powerful superconducting cable network covering the entire nation by 2030 is under review. As a part of this plan, three DOE-funded superconducting cable projects are currently underway. The Albany Project is the first among the three projects to complete the construction of cable system and commence demonstration test in real power grid.

Newly installed superconducting wire running between National Grid's Riverside and Menands substations is providing enough extra power through increased efficiency for more than 70,000 households, according to industrial gas supplier BOC.

The three-year, $26 million project involves BOC, of Murray Hill, N.J., SuperPower Inc., a subsidiary of Intermagnetics General Corp. located in Schenectady, and Sumitomo Electric Industries of Osaka, Japan.

The project is considered the first in-grid, high temperature superconductivity cable project in the United States, and will be officially commissioned on Aug. 2. High temperature superconductivity wire reduces the amount of electricity lost during transmission.

"One HTS cable can deliver three to five times more power than a conventional cable," said Ed Garcia, a BOC vice president.

In order to achieve superconductivity, or zero resistance, the wire running directly below Interstate 90 is cooled using liquid nitrogen.

The project is particularly timely at a time when the U.S. Department of Energy is projecting world electricity demand to grow 2.6 percent per year, according to Garcia. With the technology, utilities can keep up with demand without having to add multiple distribution lines, he said.

Funding for the project came from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Department of Energy. There are nine such projects underway in the United States.

September 1, 2006

Lockheed Wins Job of Building Next Spaceship

By WARREN E. LEARY and LESLIE WAYNE
WASHINGTON,



Aug. 31 — Lockheed Martin won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA on Thursday to build the nation’s next spaceship for human flight, a craft called Orion that is to replace the space shuttle and eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.

The much-awaited announcement was a major victory for Lockheed and a startling setback for its rival, a joint venture of Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Before the announcement, many analysts had said the deal was the Boeing team’s to lose. A leader in building unmanned rockets and spacecraft, Lockheed has little experience with human spaceflight; by contrast, Northrop, Boeing and their subsidiaries built not only the space shuttle fleet but the Apollo vehicles that took men to the moon in the 1960’s and 70’s.

In a late-afternoon news conference to announce the decision, NASA was tight-lipped about the reasons, saying the details of the two competing bids were “proprietary.” Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator who led the selection team, said both proposals “were sound and carefully prepared.”

Mr. Cooke said the Lockheed Martin design looked “achievable,” an indication that it relied more heavily on known technologies than developing new ones. “This is a design that is based on known capabilities,” he said.

The NASA decision is likely to change the dynamics of the space business, setting Lockheed up to be the dominant player in space exploration and perhaps forcing Boeing to rethink its role.

“For both companies, this was a make-it-or-break-it award to stay in the manned space business,” said Brett Lambert, managing director of the Densmore Group, an aerospace consulting firm, adding, “This decision defines who will continue to be a major player in space for the next 10 years.”

The plan calls for building a space capsule with an emergency escape tower similar to the Apollo capsule that ferried men to and from the moon. Orion, though, would be much larger than Apollo. The NASA administrator, Michael D. Griffin, who did not speak at the news conference, has called the new ship “Apollo on steroids.”

Orion is to carry up to six astronauts to the International Space Station; a later version would take four astronauts to the moon, where they would use a separate lander ship to reach the surface. Still later versions could serve as crew-return vehicles for ships that one day may take humans to Mars, NASA officials said.

The shuttle fleet is to be retired in 2010. Orion is to make its first human flight by 2014, but at Congress’s urging NASA hopes to fly at least a year earlier to minimize a gap in the nation’s ability to send people into space. The agency is also developing new booster rockets, based on space shuttle technology, to launch Orion and cargo to the moon. The rocket to launch Orion is set to make its first flight in 2009.

The Orion contract calls for Lockheed Martin to get $3.9 billion through 2013 for designing, developing, testing and evaluating the new craft and building two for initial flights into space. A second stage, from 2009 to 2019, provides $3.5 billion for building an unspecified number of manned ships to go to the space station and the moon, and some cargo-only versions for supplying the station. The contract also includes $750 million for engineering work to modify or improve the ships.

But some experts say that these numbers are conservative and that NASA projects typically run 50 percent above initial estimates, in part because there is little incentive to stay within budget once a contract has been awarded.

Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert at American University in Washington, said that once Boeing’s subsidiary Rockwell got the contract to build the space shuttle, “they had NASA over a barrel — they were like a monopoly supplier.”

The shuttle program is estimated to have cost around $10 billion since it began in the 1980’s. No price tag has been announced for the Bush administration’s plan for manned exploration of the moon and Mars, but estimates have run above $200 billion.

This will be the first time that Lockheed has been given a lead role in manned space flight. It comes after the company failed in a 1996 attempt to design the X-33 space plane, which was to be a replacement for the quarter-century-old shuttle fleet but was abandoned because of technical problems after NASA spent more than $900 million on it.

Joan Underwood, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said that even her company would not know the exact reasons for its selection “until each team is debriefed by NASA in a week or two.”

But she said Lockheed had been the only maker of capsule systems used by NASA since the Apollo program, from the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970’s to those of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still gathering information on Mars.

“We are the capsule company,” she said.

The big loser on Thursday was Boeing, which has stumbled in its space business lately. Its entry into the commercial space launching business came as commercial demand for satellites began to fall. Its spy satellite program was so plagued with problems that the Pentagon took it away from Boeing and gave it to Lockheed.

In addition, it was a major contractor for the International Space Station, which has suffered from enormous cost overruns. Its engineers were blamed, in part, for the problems that led to the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, and the United States Air Force recently withheld $1 billion of rocket launching contracts from Boeing after it was found that company employees had stolen proprietary documents from Lockheed to compete for Air Force rocket business.

A victory yesterday would have been a signal that Boeing had turned the corner.

“For Boeing, it would have been a real vote of confidence in their ability to manage a major program,” said John Pike, director of Global Security.org, an aerospace research company.

Tanya Deason-Sharpe, a Boeing spokeswoman, said that while Boeing was disappointed, it would compete for other manned space vehicle contracts, including the Ares I rocket that will launch Orion into space and the Ares V cargo launcher, also part of the program.

“Boeing is bigger than any single contract win or loss,” she said.

The blow to Northrop and Boeing is softened by the prospect of additional work as subcontractors to Lockheed or in other parts of the program.

Lockheed plans to spread out the work on the program in a number of locations where NASA already has a strong economic and political presence. Work is expected to be done in Houston, where Lockheed estimates that 1,200 new jobs will be created; in Denver, with 500 new jobs; in Florida, with 300; and at the Michoud plant in New Orleans, with 200.

The announcement was welcomed by members of Congress from those regions. Representative Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, called it “great news for Colorado” and “a boon to Colorado’s aerospace industry, which is third in the nation.”

While Lockheed and Boeing were the big competitors on this contract, they are partners on other government space contracts. Both are partners in United Space Alliance, a joint venture that provides support services for the shuttle. In addition, Boeing and Lockheed have formed another venture, United Launch Alliance, to jointly provide Air Force rocket launchings.

Mr. Griffin, the NASA administrator, who has been a forceful presence in the space shuttle fleet’s return to orbit after the Columbia disaster, stayed in the background at Thursday’s news conference. A spokesman said that the announcement spoke for itself and that Mr. Griffin did not take part because his presence would have been a distraction.

LONDON (Reuters) - Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.

Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.

He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account." People would be able to use programs to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct.

...

The advent of television taught political leaders the art of the sound bite. The Internet will also force them to adapt.

"The Internet has largely filled a role of funding for politicians ... but it has not yet affected elections. It clearly will," Schmidt said.

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World governments are about to sign off on the biggest and most expensive scientific experiment since the space station: a project to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. In this week's Green Room, the Iter programme's Director-General Nominee, Kaname Ikeda, argues that the considerable sums of money involved are a very worthwhile investment for the world.

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On 21 November ministers from Europe, Japan, the People's Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States of America meet in Paris to sign an agreement to construct an international experiment on the scale of a fusion power plant - Iter (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor; "the way" in Latin) in the South of France.

...

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Simply put, IMPRESS is drawing on space science to develop new materials on Earth, not just for use in catalysts but also in the manufacture of turbine blades in jet engines.

"They sound like two completely different areas, but they both employ what are known as 'intermetallics' which are similar to alloys but are different in that they are actually chemical compounds, in the same way that water is a compound," explains the Esa project leader, Dr David Jarvis.

These new metal combos are interesting because they display a range of mechanical and chemical properties that would put them ahead of conventional alloys - but only if their known shortcomings can be overcome.

...

02/03/09 06:59 AM
TROY, NY (home of Uncle Sam)

RPI unveils headlight that senses traffic

TROY (AP) — It’s a conundrum almost as old as night driving: High-beam headlights are better for visibility, but the glare can temporarily blind oncoming drivers.

After studying roadway glare for two years, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center said they have a solution for safer driving: Create a high beam that senses traffic and dims the light beam projecting into the other lane. Researchers recently demonstrated a prototype at their lab in downtown Troy.

The $890,000 study funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration looked at safety issues associated with glare, which can distract or desensitize drivers.

GREENBOX™ Thermal Management System, fueled by Entropy Solutions' patented PureTemp™ renewable phase change technology, has revolutionized the way temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals, blood products and biologics are shipped worldwide. This innovative temperature-controlled shipping system is capable of maintaining narrow temperature ranges for unprecedented durations of time — up to 120+ hours or five days, regardless of external environmental conditions.

GREENBOX's positive impact on everything from simple logistics to the global environment has been staggering. Not only can important medical supplies now be shipped via ground transport any day of the week, but it also allows companies to ship larger payloads and results in up to 65 percent reduction in distribution-related expenses.

GREENBOX is the first 100% environment-friendly, reusable shipping solution of its kind with the potential to keep millions of tons of EPS and PU out of landfills. And by partnering with an international relief organization, GREENBOX will deliver vaccines to the 3 million children who would otherwise die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Joule is reported to be building a prototype plant in Leander, Tex.

information about the target such as its distance, size and velocity based on changes to the properties of the recaptured photon - such as polarisation, frequency and momentum - compared to its former partner.

the industry's first solar window to simultaneously deliver energy efficiency, high power density and transparency

Heart failure patients with a previous myocardial infarction showed an average of 12 percent improvement one year following an investigative treatment that infused them with their own stem cells. The results triple the 4 percent improvement average the researchers projected for the Phase I trial.

Results of the trial have been published in The Lancet and concurrently presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla. They are the first report of administering subjects’ own cardiac stem cells in humans. Previous studies have used stem cells harvested from bone marrow.

The investigators harvested cardiac stem cells from the patients during coronary artery bypass surgery...Cardiac stem cells are referred to as “c-kit positive” cells because they express the c-kit protein on their surface. They were purified in Anversa’s lab in Boston and allowed to grow. Once an adequate number of stem cells were produced – about one million – Bolli’s team in Louisville reintroduced them into the region of the patient’s heart that had been scarred by the infarction.

The researchers also conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies on the patients’ hearts and saw the size of the scarred regions had decreased – a result that seemingly begins to disprove the long-held belief that once scarring occurs, the heart tissue is forever dead.

Bolli – who is lead author of the Lancet article and presenter of the data at the scientific sessions – says the adult stem cell protocol could become one of the greatest advancements in cardiac treatment in a generation.

“The results are striking,” Bolli said. “While we do not yet know why the improvement occurs, we have no doubt now that ejection fraction increased and scarring decreased. If these results hold up in future studies, I believe this could be the biggest revolution in cardiovascular medicine in my lifetime.”

Anversa has been studying cardiac stem cells’ potential to regenerate myocardial cells damaged from heart failure since the 1990s. “Seeing these cells given successfully to very sick patients is the most rewarding experience that a physician-scientist can have in his or her lifetime,”

Need to sequence that biopsy? Or that virus?

The University of Illinois team says its use of 3D-electrodes allows it to build "microbatteries" that are many times smaller than commercially available options, or the same size and many times more powerful.

It adds they can be recharged 1,000 times faster than competing tech.

However, safety issues still remain.

The scientists' "breakthrough" involved finding a new way to integrate the anode and cathode at the microscale.

"The battery electrodes have small intertwined fingers that reach into each other," project leader Prof William King told the BBC.

"That does a couple of things. It allows us to make the battery have a very high surface area even though the overall battery volume is extremely small.
Microbattery design A cross-section of the battery reveals the 3D-design of the research project's anodes and cathodes

"And it gets the two halves of the battery very close together so the ions and electrons do not have far to flow.

"Because we've reduced the flowing distance of the ions and electrons we can get the energy out much faster."

"But in principle our technology is scalable all the way up to electronics and vehicles.

"You could replace your car battery with one of our batteries and it would be 10 times smaller, or 10 times more powerful. With that in mind you could jumpstart a car with the battery in your cell phone."