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From Sounding Circle: Discovery may spur cheap solar power
Thursday, October 2, 2003
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- A major European chip maker said this week it had discovered new ways to produce solar cells which will generate electricity twenty times cheaper than today's solar panels.
STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor maker, said that, by the end of next year, it expected to have made the first stable prototypes of the new cells, which could then be put into production.
Most of today's solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, are produced with expensive silicon, the same material used in most semiconductors.
The French-Italian company expects cheaper organic materials such as plastics to bring down the price of producing energy. Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4.
The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt, said Salvo Coffa, who heads ST's research group that is developing the technology.
"This would revolutionize the field of solar energy generation," he said.
ST's trick is to use materials that are less efficient in producing energy from sunlight but which are extremely cheap.
This would revolutionize the field of solar energy generation.
-- ST researcher Salvo Coffa
Coffa said the materials should be able to turn at least 10 percent of the sun's energy into power, compared with some 20 percent for today's expensive silicon-based cells.
"We believe we can demonstrate 10 percent efficiency by the end of 2004," Coffa said.
Following that, ST and others would need to develop production technologies to make solar cells and panels in large quantities to achieve the $0.20 per watt target, he said.
"Our target is fixed at $0.20," said Coffa, who expects no major technological difficulties in going from prototypes to mass-produced commercial products.
Renewable energy is an essential part of research for ST, which says its chip and material expertise can be used to develop future solar cells and fuel cells.
ST said three weeks ago it had found a new way to produce tiny yet extremely efficient fuel cells that could power a mobile phone for 20 days.
[ Articles | 17 Apr 2004 @ 23:59 | PermaLink ]
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 From Synergic Earth News: BBC Technology -- India's hundreds of millions of farmers have a new friend in the eternal battle against failing crops and cattle diseases. Under a government scheme, agricultural workers in India's ancient, rural economy will have access to an innovation symbolic of India's booming new economy - the telephone call centre. Farmers who make the free phone call to the centre will find themselves speaking to one of many multi-lingual agricultural science graduates, trained to troubleshoot farming problems. ... The aim is to educate millions of farmers up and down the country about better methods in farming, animal husbandry and horticulture. Speaking to the BBC, junior agriculture minister Hukamdeo Narayan Yadav termed the move a revolutionary step in the agricultural history of the country. "These channels and call centres will also help in augmenting agricultural produce in the country and help India [become] a world leader in this field," said Mr Yadav. In total, there are eight call centres, each one manned seven days a week. They are expected to handle traffic from every state in India. The call-centre workers will address queries ranging from seed quality to the processing, packaging, transport and storage of produce. They will also tell the farmers about market rates and prevailing trends for their produce. "Those queries which the agriculture graduates fail to reply [to] will be passed on to specialists and if questions still remain unanswered, experts would send their replies through phone, post or personal visit", said Rahul Bhandari, who is associated with the project. (01/23/04)
[ News | 17 Apr 2004 @ 23:59 | PermaLink ]
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 From Ming the Mechanic: My friend Lionel suggested I'd probably like Giordano Bruno, who's a now relatively little known Italian renaissance philosopher from the 16th century. At least I had never heard of him, but he's been very famous or infamous in various periods.
And, indeed, I like him. Here's a good overview of what he was about: The Forgotten Philosopher, which I'll include at the bottom too. He was apparently quite a bit ahead of his time, a pioneer semanticist and epistemologist.
He wrote, for example, about the "shadows of ideas", about how ideas and words are always imprecise approximations of something more real. Like Korzybski centuries later, he took up battle against Aristotelian thinking that makes everything much too black and white."This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things." He dreamt about an infinite universe with an infinite number of inhabited worlds, united in a single interpenetrating unity. A place where God and Nature couldn't possibly be considered separate entities."The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond." And he defended loudly the right to think about such things, to dream, to question reality, search for one's own answers, and to philosophize about what it all means. Which is summarized in the slogan he coined:"Libertes philosophica" Here is a list of his writings.
Giordano was a major non-conformist thinker of his time. Which of course didn't sit well with the Catholic church. So, somebody inevitably turned him in to the Inquisition, which failed to make him recant in the slightest, and as a dangerous heretic he was eventually burned at the stake in 1600, as a martyr for free thinking and universal unity.
[ Articles | 17 Apr 2004 @ 23:59 | PermaLink ] More >
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From Sounding Circle: Nature's Oldest Drug Is Now the World's Newest Pharmaceutical
Pubdate: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 Source: The North Bay Bohemian(CA) Copyright: 2003 Metro Publishing Inc.
Author: Mari Kane GW Pharmaceuticals
Relief in Pill Form
NATURE'S OLDEST DRUG IS NOW THE WORLD'S NEWEST PHARMACEUTICAL
Beckie Nikkel does not consider herself a "sufferer" of multiple sclerosis because she has learned to deal with the disease by taking control of the medicine she takes. Five years ago, the 50-year-old Santa Rosa grandmother was taking a dozen different meds, some to counteract the side effects of others, and her next step would have been to use a baclofen pump to stop the muscle spasms, which would have rendered her legs useless. That's when she turned to cannabis and became active with the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana. In late September, she joined a convocation of activist organizations in Washington, D.C., to lobby congress and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society about cannabis.
"I used to use a vaporizer, but now I do more ingesting of cannabis nectars and candy," she says, referring to THC-laden pops distributed privately. "Those suckers work wonders, but I would love to have other natural options, especially if they were covered by insurance."
Though the federal government's stance against all things cannabis continues to thwart the efforts of Nikkel and many others, research in Europe--where the climate is remarkably milder when it comes to marijuana--is pushing forward.
At the head of the new wave, British-based GW Pharmaceuticals stands out. Under government license and using plant strains developed by HortaPharm of Amsterdam (owned by expatriate Americans David Watson and Robert Clark), the company grows high-grade, finely tuned marijuana at a secret location in the south of England. With that crop, GW has isolated beneficial cannabinoids--the active ingredients of cannabis--and created a sublingual (under the tongue) spray for the treatment of multiple sclerosis symptoms.
Of course, Beckie Nikkel currently has no chance of getting her hands on the medicine legally. If she did, according to GW's three years of clinical trials, she could find relief from her neuropathic pain and muscle spasms, and she could get a more peaceful sleep. Her appetite would increase. If Betty Nikkel could get GW's medicine (a blend of two cannabinoids brand-named Sativex) through her insurance company, she could feel a lot better.
GW Pharmaceuticals hopes to gain approval from the British government for Sativex by the end of this year. In May, the company signed a lucrative marketing agreement with the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer to help them launch the product in Europe in 2004. So now, the world's first natural cannabis pharmaceutical maker has nowhere to go but up, yet the inevitable question remains, how high?
Cannabis may well be one of the world's greatest natural remedies. Human beings have long used cannabis to relieve symptoms of everything from nausea to pain. In fact, the human relationship to cannabis is so tightly ingrained in our physiology that special receptors have evolved in our brains to link to the chemical components of the plant.
Cannabis sativa, what we now know as "marijuana," officially entered the Western pharmacopoeia over one and a half centuries ago, during Victorian times, when cannabis medicines were administered in the form of tinctures. Queen Victoria is perhaps the most celebrated consumer of early cannabis tonics.
Having a record of no known cases of fatal overdose in the history of the world, the safety of marijuana is miles ahead of even aspirin. The biggest side effects of cannabis are euphoria and possibly paranoia. With its reputation of being one of the least toxic therapeutic substances on earth, the market potential for quality-assured, health-insured cannabis drugs has not gone unnoticed by pharmaceutical companies.
Marijuana is nothing without cannabinoids. These molecules of medicament are found in the millions of tiny, resinous pistils that shoot from the cannabis leaves. The mightiest cannabinoid of all is delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), from which the famed euphoric effect is attributed. But cannabis therapy does not end with THC. All kinds of analgesic, antispasmodic, anticonvulsant, antitremor, antipsychotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-emetic, and appetite-stimulant benefits are derived from other, lesser known cannabinoids, such as cannabinadiol (CBD). GW Pharmaceuticals has combined THC and CBD to make Sativex.
"Our intention, once we have a product license application in the U.K., is to use the mutual recognition procedure to obtain approvals in other European Union member states, probably during 2004," says GW's spokesperson Mark Rogerson. "We will also be seeking to market the product in Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The U.S. market is a longer-term objective."
Rogerson is not kidding when he says America is a market they'll have to wait for. The Bush administration and the Supreme Court remain in denial of marijuana's medical benefits, and the new DEA administrator Karen Tandy has indicated that raids against California compassion clubs will continue.
By contrast, Europe and Canada have made great strides toward marijuana decriminalization, efforts which often incur the wrath of the U.S. government. Once Sativex is approved in Europe, intrepid American patients who attempt to smuggle it home will have to answer to the customs man, just as if the drug were hashish.
"If [Sativex] has not been approved by the FDA, we would not let it enter the country," said U.S. Customs Service spokesperson Michael Fleming. "If it is prohibited entry, there could be civil and possible criminal penalties attached."
Click More for More
[ Articles | 16 Apr 2004 @ 00:01 | PermaLink ] More >
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 From Synergic Earth News: Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In our present world, it is widely believed that mistakes are the result of badness. So when mistakes occur, we investigate, blame and punish. This belief has resulted in a world where violence, hate and judgment are common. Synergic science reveals that mistakes are in fact the result of ignorance. If we understand this, then when a mistake occurs, we would analyze, determine responsibility, and educate. This could soon lead to a world where public safety, love and compassion are common. ... Our human science has revealed that our knowing is incomplete and imperfect. This means that every human belief is an assumption. We can never know for sure. We can never know ALL. As you sit in your chair reading these words, you assumed the chair would hold you. You did not check under the chair to see if it had broken since its last use. When you ate lunch at your favorite restaurant last week, you assumed the waitress had washed her hands. You assumed the cook did not have hepatitis. If you had assumed otherwise, you would not have walked into that restaurant. You would not have eaten your lunch. We humans assume. Herein lies our uncertainty — that’s all we humans can do. There is nothing wrong in our assuming, we are simply obeying a fundamental ‘law’ of Nature. (11/17/03)
[ News | 16 Apr 2004 @ 00:01 | PermaLink ]
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 From Ming the Mechanic: Researchers have shown than they can slow down light to a stand still, and even store its properties in atoms and then reconstitute the light later. And now other researchers have found that they can manufacture crystal that either slow down or speed up light.
It all reminds me of a science fiction story I read once where somebody had manufactured "slow glass". It would take something like 20 years for light to pass through a pane of glass like that. So, you would buy glass panes that had been standing around on the African savannah or in the Himalayas or something for years, and put them as windows in your house. And then, for years, you could look out at exotic wildlife walking about outside or breathtaking mountain views.
[ Articles | 16 Apr 2004 @ 00:01 | PermaLink ]
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From Sounding Circle: Jesus In India
By Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian
THE FOUNDER OF THE AHMADIYYA MOVEMENT IN ISLAM
1989
ISLAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION LTD
Reproduced under the responsibility of RAM Service.
Copyright © 1996 RAM Service Inc. All rights reserved.
Jesus's escape from death on the cross and journey to India
This is an English version of an Urdu treatise written by the Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908). The theme is the escape of Jesus from death on the cross, and his journey to India in search of the lost tribes of Israel. Christian as well as Muslim scriptures, and old medical and historical books including ancient Buddhist records, provide evidence about this journey. Jesus is shown to have reached Afghanistan, and to have met the Jews who had settled there after deliverance from the bondage of Nebuchadnezzar. From Afghanistan Jesus went on to Kashmir, where other Israelite tribes had settled. There he made his home, and there in time he died; his tomb has been found in Srinagar.
[ Religion | 15 Apr 2004 @ 10:17 | PermaLink ]
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From Ming the Mechanic: MIT has made a wealth of educational materials freely available over the Internet. Lecture notes, syllabi, and exams to provide a 'free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world'."With the publication of 500 courses, MIT is delivering on the promise of OpenCourseWare that we made in 2001. We are thrilled that educators, students, and self-learners from all parts of the globe tell us that MIT OCW is having an impact on education and learning. We hope that in sharing MIT’s course materials, and our experience thus far with MIT OCW, we will inspire other institutions to openly share their course materials, creating a worldwide web of knowledge that will benefit mankind." - Charles M. Vest, President of MIT Bravo! There's no good reason why all serious educational materials shouldn't be freely available.
[ Education | 15 Apr 2004 @ 09:50 | PermaLink ]
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 For ongoing news about biodiesel, check out the Biodiesel Blog.
Biodiesel is a surprisingly well-kept secret in many places. It is often made from waste products from restaurants, or from various farm products.
The last several times I rented a car in Europe, particularly from Avis, it was fueled by biodiesel. Which explains the occasional smell of french fries, but that is well worth it, knowing that it is much more resource friendly, and will run for many kilometers with the stuff.
[ Transportation | 15 Apr 2004 @ 09:39 | PermaLink ]
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 From Synergic Earth News: In 1947, Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul wrote: It is essential that all thinking people should give time and thought to the consideration of the major world problems with which we are now faced. Some of them can be solved with relative rapidity - given common sense and a correctly appreciated self-interest; others will require foresighted planning and a long patience as, one by one, the necessary steps are taken, leading to the readjustment of human values and the inauguration of new attitudes of mind regarding right human relations. In the recognition of the growth in human consciousness and in a realization of the distinction obviously existing between primitive men and our modern intelligent humanity lie the grounds for an unshaken optimism as to human destiny. ... The key to humanity's trouble (focusing as it has in the economic difficulties of the past two hundred years and in the theological impasse of the orthodox churches) has been to take and not give, to accept and not share, to grasp and not to distribute. This has involved the breaking of a law which has placed humanity in a position of positive guilt. War is the dire penalty which mankind has had to pay for this great sin of separateness. Impressions from the Hierarchy have been received, distorted, misapplied and misinterpreted and the task of the New Group of World Servers is to offset this evil. Humanity has never really lived up to the teaching given it. Spiritual impression, whether conveyed by the Christ, by Krishna or by Buddha (and passed on to the masses by Their disciples) has not yet been expressed as it was hoped. Men do not live up to what they already know; they fail to make practical their information; they short circuit the light; they do not discipline themselves; greedy desire and unlawful ambition control and not the inner knowledge. To put it scientifically and from the esoteric angle: Spiritual impression has been interrupted and there has been interference with the divine circulatory flow. It is the task of the disciples of the world to restore this flow and to stop this interference. This is the major problem facing spiritual people at this time. (01/21/04)
[ News | 15 Apr 2004 @ 09:11 | PermaLink ]
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 From Synergic Earth News: Denise Breton and Christoher Largent write: Ever since we’ve worked on The Paradigm Conspiracy, we’ve been digesting Alfie Kohn’s work on rewards and punishments. It’s revolutionary. Rewards and punishments—as every parent, teacher, employer, minister, and politician knows—are our culture’s most common mechanisms for social control. Whoever has the power to punish or reward has the power to control others—to assert power-over status. B. F. Skinner’s behaviorist psychology (reducing all behavior to stimulus-response dynamics) was only an academic formulation of the culture’s embrace of this device. Everywhere in our society and on most of the planet, the carrot-and-stick approach is accepted as an appropriate method for getting people to do what we want, birth to death. Not long ago, for instance, someone lectured us on how wonderful such an approach is, how it can produce perfectly behaved animals, children, and spouses—as long as we have the means to bribe or coerce them into the desired behavior. Alfie Kohn has collected mountains of research in his books—Punished By Rewards, No Contest, Beyond Discipline (a good, short summary), and What to Look for in a Classroom. We may also mention one of many technical scientific studies Kohn draws on in his books: Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s book, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. The jury is in that rewards and punishments are destructive to the human psyche. Nor does it take rocket science to understand why: 1)Rewards and punishments teach power-over relations. That’s the model. And when being on the receiving end of this model gets tiresome, we begin the mad race to be on top. 2)Rewards and punishments corrupt human relationships, starting with the relation between those "higher" and "lower" in the reward-punishment hierarchy. Those under can’t tell the truth to those above them for fear of how "bad news" might further reduce their underling status. Even more commonly, those above don’t want the truth to be told. A May 1999 Frontline on the military career of Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, for instance, featured Smith confessing that during the Vietnam War (when he was a pilot), his superior wouldn’t let him report that he had failed to achieve his bombing objective. The higher-ups didn’t want the truth; they wanted only "we’re winning the war" reports. 3)Rewards and punishments teach image management. Appearing to be good is more important than being good. ... and much more. (01/19/04)
[ News | 14 Apr 2004 @ 07:01 | PermaLink ]
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 From Ming the Mechanic: One of the best demonstrations of economics I've gotten, I got from ... a monkey. It was a little monkey at City Walk by Universal Studios in L.A. It had its owner with it, who was playing an old-fashioned organ where you grind the handle and it plays a corny old tune. The monkey was dressed in a silly costume, and there was a sign presenting the simple business proposition: Get out a quarter and the monkey will come over and get it out of your hand. Get out a dollar bill and the monkey will not only come and get it, but he will also shake your hand. Which is all cute, and well worth a quarter or a dollar, just to see that the monkey knows how to get the money, and to feel that it actually shakes your hand. I got out a dollar. The monkey snapped it up, shook my hand, and moved on to other businesss. Not so much as a smile, but I still felt satisfied with the transaction.
But now, the remarkable business action going on becomes apparent from observing that there's continuously 50 to 100 people standing around, and the monkey is essentially running around as fast as it can, picking up dollar bills and shaking hands. Seemed like 10-20 customers per minute to me. And, well, despite that I'm no business genius, I can easily add that up to $600-1200 per hour. Indeed, the organ grinder had a a rather large box that all the money was dropped into, and it was running over when I saw it.
I was sort of stunned. But that is a money machine at its best. Once you've trained the monkey, it takes very little effort, brings in loads of cash, and all the customers are happy with the transaction. The monkey works for peanuts, but I'm sure he's happy too.
I have peanuts. I have a roomy bucket that will hold a lot of money. But where do I get a monkey?
[ Entrepreneurs, Money Making | 14 Apr 2004 @ 06:59 | PermaLink ]
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The Gift Hub is a site and a weblog for "connecting funders, active citizens, and advisors". An impressive list of good people are involved, such as AKMA, Chris Corrigan, David Pollard, David Weinberger, Jon Husband, Joi Ito, Larry Lessig, Doc Searls and Tom Muennecke.
The idea is to facilitate philanthropy by trying to connect idealistic donors with resources that may be helpful to them.
[ Networking | 14 Apr 2004 @ 06:56 | PermaLink ]
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 From Synergic Earth News: ENN -- People generally like simple answers. This happened, so this happened. Cause and effect. Simple. But nature doesn't work that way. Just when we think we've got something figured out, another idea comes along that turns our preconceived notions upside down. In spite of all our scientific advances, we are only just beginning to understand how ecosystems work. (02/25/04)
[ News | 13 Apr 2004 @ 13:53 | PermaLink ]
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 The Library of Halexandria is an amazing resource put together by Dan Sewell Ward.Halexandria is a Synthesis of new physics, sacred geometry, ancient and modern history, multiple universes & realities, consciousness, the Ha Qabala and ORME, extraterrestrials, corporate rule and politics, law, order and entropy, trial by jury, astronomy, monetary policy, scientific anomalies, and a whole host of other subjects ranging from astrology and astrophysics to superstrings and sonoluminesence to biblical and geologic histories to numerology, the Tarot, and creating your own reality. It is an attempt at bridging of the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius. Lots of informative and inspiring articles weaving together many different mystical subjects.
[ Articles | 13 Apr 2004 @ 04:47 | PermaLink ]
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