Change!

"Many people have ideas on how others should change; few people have ideas on how they should change."

  

-Leo Tolstoy

Hot Air!

A hydrogen refueling station in Fountain Valley, California is not only providing fuel for vehicles, but is also helping to supply power to an adjacent industrial facility, and it is reported to be the first "tri-generation fuel cell and hydrogen station" in the world.

The hydrogen energy station is located next to a wastewater treatment facility, and biogas generated from that facility provides the feedstock for the system. The biogas is converted into hydrgen which is then available for refueling hydrogen vehicles as well as for a hydrogen fuel cell from FuelCell Energy which generates 250 kilowatts of electricity for the wastewater plant. Approximately 25 vehicles per day can be refueled from this station, in addition to the electrical power generated.

Source

Blood Sport.

From intestines to tracheas, tissue engineers are building a handful of new body parts — but progress on larger organs has been slow. This is mainly because tissues need nutrients to stay alive, and they need blood vessels to deliver those nutrients. It’s difficult to build those vascular networks, but now a team from Germany may have a solution: Print some capillaries with a 3-D printer.

Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB developed special printer inks containing synthetic polymers, as well as biomolecules that will prevent the artificial tissue from being rejected. Chemical reactions turn the printed material into an elastic solid, allowing the researchers to build highly precise three-dimensional structures.

The next step would be to build entire organs, vascularized with this new printing method. Those may never be transplanted into a human, but they could be used as a test bed for new drugs or therapies, replacing animal subjects in clinical studies. Transplanting synthetic organs is still farther into the future, the Fraunhofer team says.

Sunday Silliness - Dreams :o)

Be Happy :o)

"You  live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is waisted.

  

-Ruth E. Renkl

I truly believe in this one, even though the price has been high...

Deer Season

When a deer is in the path of your vehicle, your first instinct is to get out of the way. But swerving to avoid wildlife often results in a more serious crash.


Most deer crash injuries and deaths result when drivers attempt to avoid the animal. If a collision with a deer seems probable, then hit it while maintaining full control of your vehicle and staying in your lane. Swerving could cause you to lose control of your vehicle -- into opposing traffic lanes or off the road.
 
Hunting season dates vary across the country, but it is certain with the start of fall that deer-crash season has begun.
 
The middle of October through the end of November is the time of the year wildlife officials call the "rut" -- the deer mating season. There is a lot more movement of deer during the rut than at any other time of the year. Add to that hunting activities and harvesting of fields, and the probability of deer-vehicle accidents significantly increases.
 
Use the following tips and information to prevent deer-vehicle accidents in your AEP or personal vehicle:

• Always wear a seatbelt. 
• Drive with extreme caution, at or below the posted speed limit. 
• Use your human performance improvement and hazard recognition tools to identify issues and react accordingly. 
• Leave home a few minutes early and use that extra time to slow down and watch for animals. 
• Eliminate distractions in the vehicle to ensure your focus is only on one task, driving. Talking on a cell phone is an example of such distractions. The National Safety Council reports that inattention blindness and tunnel vision can occur when you are performing multiple tasks while driving and impair your ability to react quickly. 
• Carefully scan the road and shoulders of the road ahead of you. Looking ahead can provide the time needed to react safely. 
• Two-lane roads that divide agricultural land from forested areas are especially high risk for animals in roadways. 
• Deer are creatures of habit and use the same pathways to food, water, and shelter repeatedly. Pay attention to deer crossing signs; they are indications of this. 
• Highest-risk periods are the hours around dusk and dawn. 
• Deer often move in groups. If you see one deer on or near a roadway, expect that others may follow. 
• After dark, use high beams when there is no opposing traffic. The high beams will illuminate the eyes of a deer on or near a roadway and provide greater motorist reaction time. 
• Report any deer-vehicle collisions to local law enforcement agency or state wildlife officials within 24 hours; immediately if the animal is blocking the roadway and poses a danger to other motorists. 
• If your vehicle strikes a deer and the animal is injured, do not attempt to move the animal, as the animal could hurt you or itself. Contact law enforcement.

Who Needs NASA?

In the shadow of Launchpad 39A--where the Space Shuttle Atlantis once stood ready for orbit--a team of former NASA engineers laid off when the shuttle program ended are building a rocket-inspired street legal tricycle. And it’s not just for kicks. Treycycle Gold--as the company building the bikes is now known--aims to employ more than 100 people within the year, breathing new life into the Space Coast’s engineering economy.

The company started with roughly 15 NASA engineers facing imminent termination and a little help from the Emerging Growth Institute, a non-profit that works with emerging technology companies. They decided to flip their vast experience in vehicle design into a new breed of tricycle that is part car, part bike, and all muscle, accelerating from 0-60 in just 3.6 seconds.

The Treycycle packs a Chrysler 300 3.5-liter engine that supplies the vehicle with its 260 horsepower all packed inside a molybdenum alloy frame offering more strength than the average motorcycle. Unlike three-wheeled motorcycles with their high centers of gravity, the low-to-the-ground Treycycle’s long wheel base makes it extremely difficult to roll over while cornering.

All that may seem like novelty, but people are lining up to buy the vehicles--specifically, 150 people who are already on the wait list. The company is even developing a three-seater “family” trike. For now the company will roll out two Treycycles every three weeks, but as demand dictates they will grow the company further--perhaps to as many as 130 people within a year. That’s good news for a region packed with engineering talent but without enough industry to employ all the smart people falling out of NASA programs.

For career Space Coasters, finding new ways to apply their know-how is a matter of pride. Hence the specialized serial number plates, which also read: “Made on the Space Coast in the Sunshine State.”

Solar Innovation

The Cincinnati Zoo's 6,000 solar panels generate 1.5MW of electricity

Millions of visitors go to the Cincinnati Zoo every year, but the newest attraction isn’t the new baby giraffe — it’s a solar panel. More accurately, over 6,000 solar panels installed over the zoo’s parking lot, spanning an area the size of four football fields. The sheer size of the arrays is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as their price tag: absolutely nothing.

The Cincinnati Zoo is the latest solar leasing success story, an innovative program that matches up investors with property owners who want to install solar but may not be able to afford the up-front costs.

While the new solar array has made the Cincinnati Zoo one of America’s greenest, it’s also making a lot of financial sense. The panels produce 1.5 megawatts of electricity, about 20 percent of the zoo’s total energy needs, and on extremely sunny days, the zoo doesn’t draw any power from the grid. “On a day like today, every single building in our zoo is off the grid,” said Mark Fisher, senior director, Cincinnati Zoo. “When I got my first energy bill, I started reading down and it was zero.”

The $11 million project was financed through a complex web of private investors, federal tax credits, and Ohio’s alternative energy incentives. The zoo pays a locked-in rate of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour to the solar panel owners, roughly what it would have paid the local utility. Over time, however, the zoo could save millions as electricity prices rise. “This is the future,” says Steve Melink, who runs the Melink Corporation, an Ohio firm that designed, owns, and operates the array.

Solar leasing isn’t just for large landowners – homeowners can also take advantage of the financing model to put solar panels on their roof for next to nothing. But in order to work for homeowners, the process must be affordable and simple to understand. “We know for consumer to adopt solar in the mainstream, it can’t be hard and it can’t be more expensive,” said Lynn Jurich, SunRun cofounder. SunRun is one of the largest providers of residential solar in the country, with 11,000 homeowners signed up, and they hope to hit 22,000 households by 2012.

This is pretty cool, there is a company in South Bend that just signed a partnership agreement with GE to build solar charging stations for cars.  I thing 10 years from now, this will be the norm.

Earth From Space

Sourcehttp://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/video-astronaut-photo-mosaic-lets-you-fly-across-earth-hd

Leaders!