Via: www.christian-foerge.de
The Speedway concept extends the limited range and speed of current electric vehicles by supporting it on long distance rides with an external linear motor. This propulsion is embedded beneath the pavement of highways. The vehicle is driven by a drifting magnetic field. Due to the transfer of the propulsion power for long range drives into the infrastructure, the vehicles can be lighter and more economical. The benefits of energy efficiency of electric cars can therefore be used on long range trips.

The contact-free operating linear motor can be installed beneath any existing road. This offers the possibility of a step by step implementation without derailing the existing system. During the ride the infrastructure is used to charge the onboard batteries of the speedway vehicles.

Witness the power of new energy technology in the palm of your hand. Thats right – this car does not need batteries! The car uses a real fuel cell and its own on-board hydrogen storage system. Use this accessory to fuel the H-racer with an unlimited supply of clean energy. To create free hydrogen fuel at the flick of a switch, just add water to the stations tank! Fueling is animated by a special blue light display. Includes the NEW 2007 version H-Racer, Fueling Station, Instruction Guide and solar panel. The H-Racer requires about 20 minutes of simple assembly and will operate for about 4 minutes (or approx. 100m) from a full hydrogen tank. You’ll want this car for it’s educational “toy” appeal, but be advised it does not perform like a remote control car. This product can be purchased by clicking here.

Decade of Discovery Includes prehistoric gecko, flying frog and world’s smallest deer

Press Release: Aug 10, 2009
Via: WWF

Over 350 new species including the world’s smallest deer, a “flying frog” and a 100 million-year old gecko have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, a biological treasure trove now threatened by climate change.

Washington, DC – Over 350 new species including the world’s smallest deer, a “flying frog” and a 100 million-year old gecko have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, a biological treasure trove now threatened by climate change.

A decade of research carried out by scientists in remote mountain areas endangered by rising global temperatures brought exciting discoveries such as a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air.

One of the most significant findings was not exactly “new” in the classic sense. A 100-million year-old gecko, the oldest fossil gecko species known to science, was discovered in an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley in the northern Myanmar.

The WWF report The Eastern Himalayas – Where Worlds Collide details discoveries made by scientists from various organizations between 1998 and 2008 in a region reaching across Bhutan and north-east India to the far north of Myanmar as well as Nepal and southern parts of Tibet Autonomus Region (China).

“The good news of this explosion in species discoveries is tempered by the increasing threats to the Himalayas’ cultural and biological diversity,” said Jon Miceler, Director of WWF’s Eastern Himalayas Program. “This rugged and remarkable landscape is already seeing direct, measurable impacts from climate change and risks being lost forever.”

In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to reach an agreement on a new climate deal, which will replace the existing Kyoto Protocol.

The Eastern Himalayas- Where Worlds Collide describes more than 350 new species discovered – including 244 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds, 2 mammals and at least 60 new invertebrates.

The report mentions the miniature muntjac, also called the “leaf deer,” which is the world’s oldest and smallest deer species. Scientists initially believed the small creature found in the world’s largest mountain range was a juvenile of another species but DNA tests confirmed the light brown animal with innocent dark eyes was a distinct and new species.

The Eastern Himalayas harbor a staggering 10,000 plant species, 300 mammal species, 977 bird species, 176 reptiles, 105 amphibians and 269 types of freshwater fish. The region also has the highest density of Bengal tigers in the world and is the last bastion of the charismatic greater one-horned rhino.

WWF is working to conserve the habitat of endangered species such as snow leopards, Bengal tigers, Asian elephants, red pandas, takin, golden langurs, Gangetic dolphins and one-horned rhinos.

Historically, the rugged and largely inaccessible landscape of the Eastern Himalayas has made biological surveys in the region extremely difficult. As a result, wildlife has remained poorly surveyed and there are large areas that are still biologically unexplored.

Today further species continue to be unearthed and many more species of amphibians, reptiles and fish are currently in the process of being officially named by scientists.

Kepler, NASA’s Spacecraft Telescope is on a mission to find distant planets similar to our own Planet Earth, with the potential to be hospitable to life or contain water. Until now earth and space planet-hunting telescopes have only been capable to seek out planets both larger and hotter than planet earth. Kepler is different; it is designed to find planets the same size and temperature as our own planet. The data and images Kepler is cable of providing is revolutionary. “When the light curves from tens of thousands of stars were shown to the Kepler science team, everyone was awed; no one had ever seen such exquisitely detailed measurements of the light variations of so many different types of stars,” said William Borucki, the principal science investigator of the Kepler Team.  So far all data from Kepler is test data from its first 10 days in space and just a taste of things to come.  We will be following this story very closely.  Stay tuned.

Below article clippings via: Yahoo News
ATLANTA – U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful….

…In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die from flu and its complications, according to American Medical Association estimates. Because so many more people are expected to catch the new flu, the number of deaths over two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the CDC calculated. Again, that is if a new vaccine and other efforts fail…

…The World Health Organization says as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population…

…WHO officials believe the world is in the early phase of the new pandemic.  First identified in April, swine flu has likely infected more than 1 million Americans, the CDC believes, with many of those suffering mild cases never reported. There have been 302 deaths and nearly 44,000 reported cases, according to numbers released Friday morning.
Because the swine flu virus is new, most people haven’t developed an immunity against it. So far, most of those who have died from it in the United States have had other health problems, such as asthma.

Additional information and informative links:

News Articles: Tamiflu resistant viruses
Tamiflu-resistant swine flu case found in Canada
First case in Americas of drug-resistant swine flu: reports
Tamiflu-Resistant Swine Flu Virus Found in Hong Kong

Flu Warnings: Flu Chief
AP Interview: Flu chief: Pandemic in early stages

The WHO and CDC have stopped daily reporting of deaths/cases as the numbers get harder to delineate and too large. Current death toll was somewhere near 700 with a recent jump of 66% from the last count. Margaret Chan is warning this could be the biggest flu pandemic ever seen.
Global swine flu death toll now over 700: WHO
First defense against swine flu – seasonal vaccine

Nature and Science released studies showing that the virus is vastly different from the common seasonal flu.
Swine flu virus linked to more lung damage: lab study

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark — a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center.

The galaxy, called NGC 1097, is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The “eye” at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white.

The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way’s central black hole is tame by comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.

“The fate of this black hole and others like it is an active area of research,” said George Helou, deputy director of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Some theories hold that the black hole might quiet down and eventually enter a more dormant state like our Milky Way black hole.”

The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.

“The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate,” said Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center. Sheth and Helou are part of a team that made the observations.

In the Spitzer image, infrared light with shorter wavelengths is blue, while longer-wavelength light is red. The galaxy’s red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy.

“The companion galaxy that looks as if it’s playing peek-a-boo through the larger galaxy could have plunged through, poking a hole,” said Helou. “But we don’t know this for sure. It could also just happen to be aligned with a gap in the arms.”

Other dots in the picture are either nearby stars in our galaxy, or distant galaxies.

This image was taken during Spitzer’s “cold mission,” which lasted more than five-and-a-half years. The telescope ran out of coolant needed to chill its infrared instruments on May 15, 2009. Two of its infrared channels will still work perfectly during the new “warm mission,” which is expected to begin in a week or so, once the observatory has been recalibrated and warms to its new temperature of around 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit).

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer’s infrared array camera, which made the observations, was built by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument’s principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Source: Wired
Jupiter’s new scar has been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The huge mark was left when a comet or asteroid plowed into the planet.

The image above is the sharpest yet of the Pacific Ocean–sized impact site, which was first observed by world’s luckiest amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley. The new shot was taken by Hubble’s newest toy, the Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed during the most-recent servicing mission to the telescope in May.

The collision is believed to be the largest since Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 busted into 21 pieces and slammed into the solar system’s largest planet 15 years ago.

If whatever hit Jupiter — and astronomers might never know what it was — had instead struck Earth, it would have caused catastrophic damage to human civilization.

Via: http://www.spaceweather.com/

IMPACT ON JUPITER?
“Jupiter has been hit by something similar to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts in 1994,” reports astrophotographer Anthony Wesley. “There is a jet black circular impact mark near its south pole that I imaged tonight from my observatory in Murrumbateman, Australia.” South is up in this snapshot of the feature:

“I have imagery of that same location from 2 nights earlier without the impact mark so this is a very recent event,” he adds. “This image shows that the material has already begun to spread out in a fan shape on one side, and should be rapidly pulled apart by the fast jetstream winds.

I’m sure this will generate some interest around the astronomy community, as impacts like this are rare. I recorded a lot of footage, and will be generating more images and a rotation animation.”

I’ll try and post updates as more information becomes available.

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

The new environmentally friendly formulation means the cement industry could change from being a “significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2,” says Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based Novacem, whose invention has garnered support and funding from industry and environmentalists.

The new cement, which uses a different raw material, certainly has a vast potential market. Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions – more than the entire aviation industry. And the long-term trends are upwards: a recent report by the French bank Credit Agricole estimated that, by 2020, demand for cement will increase by 50% compared to today.

Please read the full article here via Eco Worldly.