The 'Other' Sweetener That's Made from Sugar, but is Closer to DDT (link)

The 'Other' Sweetener That's Made from Sugar, but is Closer to DDT


A short interesting article on Splenda that you can read here: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/26/major-media-finally-exposes-splendas-lies.aspx

Transparent Photovoltaic Cells Turn Windows Into Solar Panels

(Don't forget to see my last post! I added this one accidentally and I can't get it off, lol)
Written by John Collins Rudolf, on April 20th, 2011, Here: nytimes.com.


A new class of transparent photovoltaic cells has been developed that can turn an ordinary windowpane into a solar panel without impeding the passage of visible light, scientists said Tuesday.
The cells could one day transform skyscrapers into giant solar collectors, said Richard Lunt, one of the researchers on the project.
“We think there’s a lot of potential to be able to integrate these into tall buildings,” Dr. Lunt, a postdoctoral researcher at the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics, said in an interview.

Mr. Lunt demonstrating the transparency of the new solar cell

Previous attempts at transparent solar cells have either failed to achieve high efficiency or blocked too much light to be used in windows. But the new cells, based on organic molecules similar to dyes and pigments, are tailored to absorb only the near-infrared spectrum and have the potential to transform that light into electricity at relatively high efficiency.
The current efficiency of the prototype cells is only about 2 percent, but some basic modifications, like stacking the cells, could increase efficiency to around 10 percent fairly easily, Dr. Lunt said.
The largest challenge in developing commercial applications for the new solar cells will be longevity. The cells could be packaged in the middle of double-paned windows, which would provide protection from the elements. But the longevity of the cells would still need to approach the life span of the windows themselves, which would not be replaced for decades.
“To make this thing truly useful, you do need to extend the lifetime, and make sure it reaches at least 20 years, or even longer than that,” said Vladimir Bulovic, a professor of electrical engineering at M.I.T. who collaborated on the development of the cells.
Mr. Bulovic said that previous work to extend the life span of organic light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which share properties with the organic solar cells, indicated that the problem of longevity was not an extraordinarily difficult one.
“It appears at this point that this is an engineering problem,” he said. “I would expect that within a decade those will be solved issues.”

If the cells can be made long-lasting, they could be integrated into windows relatively cheaply, as much of the cost of conventional photovoltaics is not from the solar cell itself, but the materials it is mounted on, like aluminum and glass. Coating existing structures with solar cells would eliminate some of this material cost.
If the transparent cells ultimately prove commercially viable, the power they generate could significantly offset the energy use of large buildings, said Dr. Lunt, who will begin teaching at Michigan State University this fall.
“We’re not saying we could power the whole building, but we are talking about a significant amount of energy, enough for things like lighting and powering everyday electronics,” he said.
The Center for Excitonics, an Energy Frontier Research Center financed by the Department of Energy, provided funds for the research. A paper describing the technology behind the cells will appear in the next issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.

University of Michigan researchers find a way to make solar power without solar cells, finding could mean cheaper solar technology

Written by Amanda H. Miller HERE, on Apr 20, 2011

Solar electricity has traditionally meant solar cells and solar panels, but researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a new way to generate power from the sun without using traditional methods.
In finding a new way to capture the sun’s energy, Professor Stephen Rand and doctoral student William Fisher disproved age-old theories about how light behaves. They found a way to create an “optical Battery” capable of using the sun’s magnetic powers to generate power, according to a press release from the university.

“We simply chose to ignore one of the standard assumptions in optics, that the magnetic field of light is too weak to have a notable effect in almost every situation, and see what could happen,” Fisher wrote in an e-mail.
Fisher said that he and Rand did not set out to find a new way of generating solar power, it was the happy byproduct of their research on optical magnetism, he wrote.
Fisher and Rand discovered that when light is traveling through a material that does not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects 100 million times greater than scientists previously believed, according to the press release.
“This could lead to a new kind of solar cell without semiconductors and without absorption to produce charge separation,” Rand was quoted in the release.
In order for the rectification process to work, a light must be shone through a material that doesn’t conduct electricity like glass or porcelain and be focused to an intensity of 10 million watts per square centimeter, according to the release.
“The intensity discussed in the press release is beyond what can be achieved with sunlight,” Fisher wrote in his e-mail, “so we would like to find materials in which this threshold is much lower. Preliminary results from other experiments have shown that this may be possible, but many engineering problems remain.”
Looking for new materials and trying to increase the energy output will be on top of the researchers’ lists as the project moves forward. And one day, this new science could be transformed into a new solar power generation system that uses fewer minerals, a simpler construction process and less expensive every-day materials.
“At the moment this does not appear to be a more efficient way to generate solar power,” Fisher wrote, “but the use of simple dielectric materials could reduce the cost compared to current techniques.”

Image courtesy of NextBigFuture.com

Digital Film (Possible Technology?)



RE-35 Digital-film



I saw an article about a piece of new tech recently that would turn film cameras into digital ones (which is pretty cool).

I have a Konica-Minolta that I could use it in too, but as I was reading into the article and the comments I found out that it was something a company put out as an April Fool's prank, and never intended for actual production.
Here's a bit of the article below and the message from the "inventor" of the technology:

"For photographers who are attached to their analog equipment but can no longer resist the pull of the digital age, RE35 proposes a solution: a digital cartridge that fits into any 35mm camera and connects to your computer via USB.
"The RE-35 cartridge, in place of film, has a pull-out “sensor” that captures the images and saves them to flash memory within the cartridge. When plugged in to a computer, the cartridge charges and transfers images with built-in software."

All in all it sounds like a pretty cool piece of equipment, but here is what the producer had to say about it:

"Thankyou for your enquiry about Re35.
Some good news:
The feedback to our "product" has truly been overwhelming. It seems Re-35 really addresses a need and people worldwide can't seem to wait to get their hands on our "product".
The bad news:
Some things are to good to be true!
Re35 does not really exist. We (the design company Rogge & Pott) created Re35 as an exercise in identity-design. We invented the "product" because it was something that we had wished for for a long time (as many others).
We launched the website and sent out "press releases" on April first - thinking, that the date would make clear, that Re35 is just wishful thinking - a classic April Fools Prank!
However:
All this attention Re35 ist getting might actually be good for something. It proves, that there is a gigantic community of photographers with analog equipment out there that is desperately waiting for a product like this to come along.
We hope there are no hard feelings
and that you are not too disappointed.

Cheers from Germany.
Henning Rogge"

Too bad! Would have been nice to get digital images off of manual cameras.

To view the the full article on PopularScience, go here (http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-04/35-mm-usb-cartridge-makes-film-cameras-digital)

Eating Just One Sausage a Day Raises Your Cancer Risk By 20 Percent (%)

An article I thought interesting, we've cut down on our processed foods by quite a lot:

Eating Just One Sausage a Day Raises Your Cancer Risk By 20 Percent

"Just one sausage a day can significantly raise your risk of bowel cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease, according to an analysis by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). Eating 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily -- about one sausage or three pieces of bacon -- raises the likelihood of the cancer by a fifth.

Processed meats include bacon, ham, pastrami, salami and hot dogs. Sausages and hamburgers can also fall into the category if they have been preserved with salt or chemical additives.
Processed meats may also trigger cancer in the prostate, lung, stomach and esophagus.

The analysis also found that red meat raises the risk of bowel cancer, but to a lesser extent. Processing raises levels of cancer-causing chemicals called N-nitroso compounds, making bacon, sausages and other processed meats more deadly...."

Read more at Dr. Mercola's site: (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/17/eating-just-one-sausage-a-day-raises-your-cancer-risk-by-20-percent.aspx)

Eco-farming outperforms GMOs at improving crop yields and growing more food, says report

(NaturalNews.com) A new United Nations (UN) report blows a major hole in the modern myth that genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are the answer to improving crop yields and ending world hunger. A UN Special Rapporteur explains that small-scale eco-farming reliant on natural growing methods works better than GMO and other pesticide-based agricultural systems at producing more and better food -- and if implemented on a wider scope, small-scale farming could double the world's food production capacity within ten years.

"Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live -- especially in unfavorable environments," said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur. "To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80 percent in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116 percent for all African projects. Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of three to ten years."

Instead of relying on chemical pesticides and insecticides, eco-farming utilizes nature's own balance to thwart pests and improve yields. Certain combinations of trees, plants, animals, and insects, are used to maintain soil health and eliminate harmful pests. Beneficial insects like ladybugs, for instance, work very well in organic agriculture to protect crops from pests without the need for harsh chemical applications (http://blog.cascadianfarm.com/category/farm/natural-pesticides-using-beneficial-insects-for-organic-pest-control.aspx).


Unlike GMOs, eco-farming allows the People to freely grow and harvest their own food, and take advantage of what nature freely offers them in order to do so. Within the GMO paradigm, however, farmers are controlled by companies like Monsanto that sell them self-destructing "Frankenseeds." These seeds require heavy pesticide applications in order to grow, and represent an unsustainable system that has devastated the livelihoods of thousands of farmers while failing to deliver on its promises (http://www.naturalnews.com/GMO.html).

De Schutter explained in his address that when the African country of Malawi replaced is "massive chemical fertilizer subsidy program" with agroecology, more than 1.3 million of the poorest people in the nation benefited, and corn yields increased from one ton per hectare (ton/ha) to up to three tons/ha.

"Despite its impressive potential in realizing the right to food for all, agroecology is still insufficiently backed by ambitious public policies and consequently hardly goes beyond the experimental state," he added.

Article's sources: http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/press_releases/20110308_agroecology-report-pr_en.pdf

If you found this article informative, you may also want to read "Organic produce superior to conventional on ever level, study finds", also by Natural News.