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Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Breville's All-In-One Is a Space Saving Multi-Tasking Mixer
Monday, April 8, 2013
'Artificial leaf' gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water
Apr. 8, 2013 ? Another innovative feature has been added to the world's first practical "artificial leaf," making the device even more suitable for providing people in developing countries and remote areas with electricity, scientists reported in New Orleans on April 8. It gives the leaf the ability to self-heal damage that occurs during production of energy.
Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D., described the advance during the "Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture" at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Nocera, leader of the research team, explained that the "leaf" mimics the ability of real leaves to produce energy from sunlight and water. The device, however, actually is a simple catalyst-coated wafer of silicon, rather than a complicated reproduction of the photosynthesis mechanism in real leaves. Dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, catalysts in the device break water down into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Those gases bubble up and can be collected and used as fuel to produce electricity in fuel cells.
"Surprisingly, some of the catalysts we've developed for use in the artificial leaf device actually heal themselves," Nocera said. "They are a kind of 'living catalyst.' This is an important innovation that eases one of the concerns about initial use of the leaf in developing countries and other remote areas."
Nocera, who is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University, explained that the artificial leaf likely would find its first uses in providing "personalized" electricity to individual homes in areas that lack traditional electric power generating stations and electric transmission lines. Less than one quart of drinking water, for instance, would be enough to provide about 100 watts of electricity 24 hours a day. Earlier versions of the leaf required pure water, because bacteria eventually formed biofilms on the leaf's surface, shutting down production.
"Self-healing enables the artificial leaf to run on the impure, bacteria-contaminated water found in nature," Nocera said. "We figured out a way to tweak the conditions so that part of the catalyst falls apart, denying bacteria the smooth surface needed to form a biofilm. Then the catalyst can heal and re-assemble."
Nocera said that about 3 billion people today live in areas that lack access to traditional electric production and distribution systems. That population will grow by billions in the decades ahead. About 1 billion people in the developing world already lack reliable access to clean water. Thus, a clear need exists for a simple device like the artificial leaf that's compatible with local conditions.
"It's kind of like providing 'fast-food energy,'" he noted. "We're interested in making lots of inexpensive units that may not be the most efficient, but that get the job done. It's kind of like going from huge mainframe computers to a personal laptop. This is personalized energy."
Earlier devices used rare, costly metals and other materials, involved complicated wiring and were expensive to manufacture. But Nocera's artificial leaf uses less-expensive materials and incorporates a design -- a so-called "buried junction" -- that is simple and would be inexpensive to mass produce. And the leaf has advantages over solar panels, which are costly and produce energy only during daylight hours. The leaf's hydrogen and oxygen, in contrast, can be stored and used at night.
"A lot of people are designing complicated, expensive energy-producing devices, and it is difficult to see them being adopted on a large scale," he said. "Ours is simple, less expensive, and it works. And with that, I think we've changed the dialog in the field."
Among the team's priorities for further development of the device: integrating it with technology for converting the hydrogen into a liquid fuel that could run traditional portable electric generators or even cars.
Nocera acknowledged research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/f5b7sYp9CPQ/130408185855.htm
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Virgin America best US airline performer in 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. airlines scored their second best performance last year in the more than two decades that researchers have been measuring airline quality, with Virgin America the leader, says an annual report released Monday.
The report ranked the 14 largest U.S. airlines based on on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, consumer complaints and passengers who were bought tickets but were turned away because flights were over booked.
Airline performance in 2012 was the second highest in the 23 years that Wichita State University at Omaha in Nebraska and Purdue University in Indiana have tracked the performance of airlines. The airline's best year was 2011.
Virgin America, headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., did the best job on baggage handling and had the second-lowest rate of passengers denied seats due to overbookings. United Airlines, whose consumer complaint rate nearly doubled last year, had the worst performance. United has merged with Continental Airlines, but has had rough spots in integrating the operations of the two carriers.
The number of complaints consumers filed with the Department of Transportation overall surged by one-fifth last year to 11,445 complaints, up from 9,414 in 2011.
"Over the 20 some year history we've looked at it, this is still the best time of airline performance we've ever seen," said Dean Headley, a business professor at Wichita State University in Kansas, who has co-written the annual report. The best year was 2011, which was only slightly better than last year, he said.
Despite those improvements, it's not surprising that passengers are getting grumpier, Headley said. Carriers keep shrinking the size of seats in order to stuff more people into planes. Empty middle seats that might provide a little more room have vanished. And more people who have bought tickets are being turned away because flights are overbooked.
"The way airlines have taken 130-seat airplanes and expanded them to 150 seats to squeeze out more revenue, I think, is finally catching up with them," he said. "People are saying, 'Look, I don't fit here. Do something about this.' At some point airlines can't keep shrinking seats to put more people into the same tube," he said.
The industry is even looking at ways to make today's smaller-than-a-broom closet toilets more compact in the hope of squeezing a few more seats onto planes.
"I can't imagine the uproar that making toilets smaller might generate," Headley said, especially given that passengers increasingly weigh more than they use to. Nevertheless, "will it keep them from flying? I doubt it would."
The rate of complaints per 100,000 passengers also rose to 1.43 last year from 1.19 in 2011.
In recent years, some airlines have shifted to larger planes that can carry more people, but that hasn't been enough to make up for an overall reduction in flights.
The rate at which passengers with tickets were denied seats because planes were full rose to 0.97 denials per 10,000 passengers last year, compared with 0.78 in 2011.
It used to be in cases of overbookings that airlines usually could find a passenger who would volunteer to give up a seat in exchange for cash, a free ticket or some other compensation with the expectation of catching another flight later that day or the next morning. Not anymore.
"Since flights are so full, there are no seats on those next flights. So people say, 'No, not for $500, not for $1,000,' " said airline industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr.
Regional carrier SkyWest had the highest involuntary denied-boardings rate last year, 2.32 per 10,000 passengers.
But not every airline overbooks flights in an effort to keep seats full. JetBlue and Virgin America were the industry leaders in avoiding denied boardings, with rates of 0.01 and 0.07, respectively.
United Airlines' consumer complaint rate was 4.24 complaints per 100,000 passengers. Southwest had the lowest rate, at 0.25. Southwest was among five airlines that lowered complaint rates last year compared to 2011. The others were American Eagle, Delta, JetBlue and US Airways.
Consumer complaints were significantly higher in the peak summer travel months of June, July and August when planes are especially crowded.
"As airplanes get fuller, complaints get higher because people just don't like to be sardines," Mann said.
The complaints are regarded as indicators of a larger problem because many passengers may not realize they can file complaints with the Transportation Department, which regulates airlines.
At the same time that complaints were increasing, airlines were doing a better job of getting passengers to their destinations on time.
The industry average for on-time arrival rates was 81.8 percent of flights, compared with 80 percent in 2011. Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance record, 93.4 percent in 2012. ExpressJet and American Airlines had the worst records with only 76.9 percent of their planes arriving on time last year.
The industry's on-time performance has improved in recent years, partly due to airlines' decision to cut back on the number of flights.
"We've shown over the 20 years of doing this that whenever the system isn't taxed as much ? fewer flights, fewer people, less bags ? it performs better. It's when it reaches a critical mass that it starts to fracture," Headley said.
The industry's shift to charging for fees for extra bags, or sometimes charging fees for any bags, has significantly reduced the rate of lost or mishandled bags. Passengers are checking fewer bags than before, and carrying more bags onto planes when permitted.
The industry's mishandled bag rate peaked in 2007 at 7.01 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. It was 3.07 in 2012, down from 3.35 bags the previous year.
The report's ratings are based on statistics kept by the department for airlines that carry at least 1 percent of the passengers who flew domestically last year. The research is sponsored by Purdue University in Indiana and by Wichita State.
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
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Kidnapped 89-year-old to captors: 'You got to be kind to other people'
An 89-year-old woman who spent two days locked in her car trunk thinking she'd never be found has a message for her teen captors.
"You got to be kind to other people if you want somebody to be kind to you," Margaret Smith said.
The 4-foot-11 octangenerian's story began with an act of kindness on March 18.
Smith had stopped at the Chicken Man Convenience Store in Milford, Del., for a Butter Pecan ice cream cone when two teenage girls approached her and asked for a ride across town.
"I decided not to, then I said, 'Well, a good deed,'" Smith said.
After driving around for a while, Smith said the girls snatched her car keys and stuffed her in the trunk of her Buick.
"The way they drove off flying, I didn't think nobody would ever find me," she said. "I just had to pray about and hope that I'd be found."
Smith spent the next two days crammed in the trunk, without food, water and her blood pressure medication. She said the only time the girls opened the trunk was to rob her of the cash she was carrying.
"I was very tired, cold, hungry, scared," Smith said. "I didn't know what to expect."
After spending 48 hours locked in her trunk, Smith's kidnappers inexplicably decided to dump her in a remote cemetery.
"I was crawling through the cemetery on hands and knees," Smith said. "Nothing but a pair of stockings on, no jacket...Finally somebody found me. I don't know who."
Smith was taken to a local hospital, where her family, who had reported her missing, received a call that she was safe.
Delaware State Police found Smith's car days later and arrested and charged five teenagers inside. All are believed to have some involvement in the kidnapping, robbery and theft, ABC News' Philadelphia affiliate WPVI reported.
Four of the teens, ranging in age from 14 to 17, are being charged as adults, while a fifth faces receiving stolen property and conspiracy charges as a minor.
Also ReadSource: http://gma.yahoo.com/kidnapped-89-old-her-captors-got-kind-other-155806683--abc-news-topstories.html
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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Pfeiffer: Obama won't enact 'Romney economic plan'
Reacting to an early rejection of the expected details of the White House's budget proposal by Speaker John Boehner, President Obama's senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pushed back this morning on "This Week," saying that the president would not enact "the Romney economic plan."
"What this president will not do is, come in, right after getting re-elected, and enact the Romney economic plan, which is what the Republicans in the House are proposing," Pfeiffer said.
The White House is expected to release details of a budget proposal this week that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which are unpopular among some Democrats.
But Pfeiffer said those entitlement cuts would only happen on two conditions.
"One, it's part of a balanced package that includes asking - closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthiest, and two, that it has protections for the most vulnerable, including the oldest seniors," he said.
The news of those details in President Obama's budget was met with a swift statement from the House speaker indicating that raising taxes was a non-starter.
Pfeiffer on This Week "When the president visited the Capitol last month, House Republicans stated a desire to find common ground and urged him not to make savings we agree upon conditional on another round of tax increases. If reports are accurate, the president has not heeded that call," Boehner said in a statement Friday. "If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes. That's no way to lead and move the country forward."
Pfeiffer also addressed the ongoing negotiations over a possible bill that would address gun violence in light of the shooting in Newtown, Conn. last year that left 20 children dead. At this point, only a bill that includes new rules on background checks is likely. Pfeiffer scolded Republican members of the Senate for insisting on a filibuster, recalling the president's most recent State of the Union address.
"Every member of Congress stood up and applauded when the president called for an up or down vote on these measures. Now that the cameras are off and they are not forced to look the Newtown families in the face, now they want to make it harder and filibuster it," Pfeiffer said.
Finally, the president's senior adviser addressed tensions between the United States and North Korea. Pfeiffer said the administration would not be surprised if the secretive communist regime conducted another missile test.
"We wouldn't be surprised if they did a test. They've done that in the past. Like I said, this is something that's been going on with North Korea for many, many years, long before President Obama came to power," Pfeiffer said.
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Also ReadSource: http://news.yahoo.com/dan-pfeiffer-president-obama-wont-145412374.html
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AP source: US delays missile test as tensions rise
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Amid mounting tensions with North Korea, the Pentagon has delayed an intercontinental ballistic missile test that had been planned for next week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a senior defense official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
The official said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to put off the long-planned Minuteman 3 test until sometime next month because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis. Hagel made the decision Friday, the official said.
The test was not connected to the ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises that have been going on in that region and have stoked North Korean anger and fueled an escalation in threatening actions and rhetoric.
North Korea's military warned earlier this week that it was authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. And South Korean officials say North Korea has moved at least one missile with "considerable range" to its east coast ? possibly the untested Musudan missile, believed to have a range of 1,800 miles. U.S. officials have said the missile move suggests a North Korean launch could be imminent and thus fuels worries in the region.
Pyongyang's moves come on the heels of the North's nuclear test in February, and the launch in December of a long-range North Korean rocket that could potentially hit the continental U.S. Added to that is the uncertainty surrounding the intentions of North Korea's new young leader, Kim Jong Un.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been angered by increasing sanctions and ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which have included a broad show of force ranging from stealthy B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters to a wide array of ballistic missile defense-capable warships. The exercises are scheduled to continue through the end of the month.
This past week, the U.S. said two of the Navy's missile-defense ships were moved closer to the Korean peninsula, and a land-based system is being deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam later this month. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to beef up its U.S.-based missile defenses.
While Washington is taking the North Korean threats seriously, U.S. leaders continue to say that they have seen no visible signs that the North is preparing for a large-scale attack.
The defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the Minuteman 3 test delay and requested anonymity, said U.S. policy continues to support the building and testing of its nuclear deterrent capabilities. And the official said the launch was not put off because of any technical problems.
The globe-circling intercontinental ballistic missiles make up one of the three legs of America's nuclear arsenal. There are about 450 Minuteman 3 missiles based in underground silos in the north-central U.S. The other two legs of the nuclear arsenal are submarine-launched ballistic missiles and weapons launched from big bombers, such as the B-52 and the stealthy B-2.
The traditional rationale for the "nuclear triad" of weaponry is that it is essential to surviving any nuclear exchange.
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