Another Century Of Oil? Getting More From Current Reserves

LANCE IVERSEN Corbis

From Scientific American:

Amid warnings of a possible "peak oil," advanced technologies offer ways to extract every last possible drop.

On fourteen dry, flat square miles of California’s Central Valley, more than 8,000 horsehead pumps—as old-fashioned oilmen call them—slowly rise and fall as they suck oil from underground. Glittering pipelines crossing the whole area suggest that the place is not merely a relic of the past. But even to an expert’s eyes, Kern River Oil Field betrays no hint of the technological miracles that have enabled it to survive decades of dire predictions.

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How Can We Tell If a Country Is Making Nuclear Power Or Nuclear Weapons?

Bombs or Power?: Centrifuges are usually arranged in a triangular cascade; the layout tips inspectors to its purpose. Weapons require heavily enriched uranium, so the triangle is long and narrow; power takes more fuel, so the cascade is short and fat. McKibillo

From Popular Science:

It's all about enrichment.

Just about everyone insists that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at building weapons. Iran claims it only wants nuclear power. So how do weapons inspectors get at the truth? They study the country’s supply and treatment of uranium, one of the most abundant nuclear materials on the planet.

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Building The World's Most Powerful Laser

Photo: Power up: This laser can deliver a 200-joule pulse of light lasting just 100 femtoseconds. The cables at left pump power to green flash lamps that pump the laser. Credit: Texas Petawatt Laser Project

From Technology Review:

New lasers will be key to making fusion energy and proton therapy practical.

This March, researchers at the National Ignition Facility demonstrated a 1.1 megajoule laser designed to ignite nuclear fusion reactions by 2010. But the facility's technology, which is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, cannot yet generate enough energy to drive a practical power plant. So, even as physicists look forward to next year's demonstration, they're working on even more powerful lasers that could make possible a method for a kind of laser-induced fusion called fast ignition.

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First Black Hole For Light Created On Earth

The full-wave simulation result when light is incident to the black hole
(Image: Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui)

From New Scientist:

An electromagnetic "black holeMovie Camera" that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time.

The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity.

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Alien Giant Snakes Threaten To Invade Up To 1/3 of U.S.

Researchers place a radio transmitter inside a 16-foot (5-meter) Burmese python in Florida's Everglades National Park in an undated photo. Native to Asia, the species is already established in the wild in Florida and is taking a toll on Floridian animals. A similar fate could await ecosystems in a wide swath of the U.S. if other non-native giant snake species are allowed to flourish in the country, an October 2009 study says. Photograph courtesy Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service

From National Geographic:

Nine species of giant snakes—none of them native to North America and all popular pets among reptile lovers—could wreak havoc on U.S. ecosystems if the snakes become established in the wild, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) .

Two of the giant snakes are already at home in Florida. One of them, the Burmese python, has the potential to infiltrate the entire lower third of the U.S., the study says.

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Wiser Wires -- Smart grids

From The Economist:

Information technology can make electricity grids less wasteful and much greener. Businesses have lots of ideas and governments are keen, but obstacles remain

WHAT was the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century? The motor car, perhaps, or the computer? In 2000 America’s National Academy of Engineering gave a different answer: “the vast networks of electrification”. These, the academy concluded, made most of the century’s other advances possible.

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Youth 'Cannot Live' Without Web

From The BBC:

A survey of 16 to 24 year olds has found that 75% of them feel they "couldn't live" without the internet.

The report, published by online charity YouthNet, also found that four out of five young people used the web to look for advice.

About one third added that they felt no need to talk to a person face to face about their problems because of the resources available online.

The findings were unveiled at the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday.

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My Comment: I am 50, and I cannot live without the web.

The Other Peak Oil: Demand From Developed World Falling

OIL HALT: Demand for oil in developed countries could be passed its prime.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/FLCELLOGUY

From Scientific American:

Oil demand in industrialized countries peaked in 2005 and will not reach that high again, a new report predicts.

Demand for oil in developed nations peaked in 2005, and changing demographics and improved motor-vehicle efficiency guarantee that it won't hit those heights again, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates says in a new report.

Reduced petroleum demand in developed nations could make their economic growth less vulnerable to oil price shocks, the report states.

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Leaked Barnes & Noble e-Reader Is A Powerful Multitouch Hybrid

Barnes & Noble e-Reader

From Popular Science:

Take a Kindle, and put a multitouch screen where the keyboard and navigation buttons go, and you've got the Barnes & Noble e-reader.

We're still a week away from Barnes & Noble's big e-reader announcement, but we've know they've had something cooking for a while now. And today, our pals at Gizmodo hit the mother load: leaked shots of a forthcoming dual-screen device that is three-quarters e-ink and one-quarter (wait for it) color multitouch.

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Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map

Deep drilling: At Range Resources’ site in Washington County, PA, a specially designed rig is used to drill more than a thousand meters down and gradually turn 90° to follow the gas-rich shale deposit. The rig will drill half a dozen wells at the site. Beside it is a pond holding debris and mud from a well. Credit: Roy Ritchie

From Technology Review:

Vast amounts of the clean-burning fossil fuel have been discovered in shale deposits, setting off a gas rush. But how it will affect our energy use is still uncertain.

The first sign that there's something unusual about the flat black rocks strewn across the shore of Lake Erie comes when Gary Lash smashes two of them together. They break easily and fall into shards that give off the faint odor of hydrocarbons, similar to the smell of kerosene. But for Lash, a geologist and professor at nearby SUNY Fredonia, smashing the rocks is a simple trick designed to catch the attention of a visitor. The black outcroppings that protrude from the nearby bluff onto the narrow beach are what really interest him.

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The Supercollider And A Theory About Fate

This was some of the worst damage to the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: CERN

From CNET:

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot, and frigid helium shut it down, the world's biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again.

Before year's end, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

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Time-Travelling Higgs Sabotages The LHC. No, Really

From New Scientist:

Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future? That's the suggestion of a couple of reasonably distinguished theoretical physicists, which has received a fresh airing in the New York Times today.

Actually, it's the Higgs boson that is doing the sabotage. Apparently, among the many singular properties of the Higgs that the LHC is meant to discover could be the ability to turn back time to stop its cover being blown.

Or as the New York Times puts it:

"the hypothesized Higgs boson... might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

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Whatever Happened To Global Warming? How Freezing Temperatures Are Starting To Shatter Climate Change Theory

Sun or sea? The importance of the ocean's cooling and warming cycles are now under serious consideration as a key factor in global temperatures

From The Daily Mail:

In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.

And while the residents of the icy city of Missoula can stave off the -10C chill with thermals and fires, there may be no easy remedy for the wintry snap's repercussions.

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Researchers Discover Mechanism That Helps Humans See In Bright And Low Light

Illustration of human eye cross section. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nurbek Sagynbaev)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 14, 2009) — Ever wonder how your eyes adjust during a blackout? When we go from light to near total darkness, cells in the retina must quickly adjust. Vision scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an intricate process that allows the human eye to adapt to darkness very quickly. The same process also allows the eye to function in bright light.

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The Link Between Parkinson Disease And Farming

From Live Science:

Although genetics is very important in Parkinson disease (PD), many researchers believe that environmental exposures also increase a person's risk of developing the disease. There are studies that show that farmers and other agricultural workers have an increased risk of getting PD.

PD was first described in 1817 by Dr. James Parkinson, a British physician. It affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60. It can also affect younger people. The average age of onset is 60. Research suggests that PD affects at least 500,000 people in the United States.

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Gallery: Let the X-Planes Begin

From Autopia:

Few aircraft are as storied as the experimental series known as the X-Planes. These flying laboratories date to the mid-1940s and took us ever higher, further and faster.

The first, the Bell X-1, was developed to explore transonic flight after fighter pilots began experiencing control problems as they approached the speed of sound in dives. Since then, a long list of X-Planes — and other test aircraft lacking the official ‘X’ moniker — have explored the unknown edge of aerodynamics and aviation. From the early days of supersonic flight and speed records to the possibilities of unmanned combat aircraft, X-Planes have, as their pilots say, pushed the edge of the envelope.

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Modern Man 'A Wimp', Says Anthropologist

Neanderthal man, as reconstructed by French scientists.

From The Independent:

Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

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Marine Plant Life Holds The Secret To Preventing Global Warming

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds, above, cover less than 1 per cent of the world's seabed, but lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor

From Times Online:

Life in the ocean has the potential to help to prevent global warming, according to a report published today.

Marine plant life sucks 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but most of the plankton responsible never reaches the seabed to become a permanent carbon store.

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are a different matter. Although together they cover less than 1 per cent of the world’s seabed, they lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor. They are estimated to store 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year — nearly half of global transport emissions — making them one of the most intense carbon sinks on Earth.

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Gene Linked To Better And Faster Decision Making

From The Telegraph:

Decision-makers are born not made, say scientists, as they discover people inherit a decisive gene.

The researchers found that people with a particular gene made quicker and more accurate decisions.

They were also better at learning tasks that require rapid and flexible decision-making compared to those with a different genetic make-up.

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Kellogg's Will Use Laser To Burn Logo On To Individual Corn Flakes To Stamp Out Fakes

A proportion of Kellogg's flakes will be branded with the trademark using a laser

From The Daily Mail:

According to the advertising slogan, if you see Kellogg's on the box then you know it's Kellogg's in the box.

But now the company has become so concerned about similarly packaged supermarket cereals, it has developed a laser to burn its logo on to individual Corn Flakes.

The concentrated beam of light creates a toasted appearance without changing the taste.

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