CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that soldiers will accompany government officials when they take over oil projects in the Orinoco River basin next month. Chavez has decreed that Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, will take a minimum 60 percent stake in four heavy-oil projects in the Orinoco River region and invited the six private companies operating there to stay on as minority partners. ‘On May 1 we are going to take control of the oil fields,’ Chavez said. ‘I’m sure no transnational company is going to draw a shotgun, but we will go with the armed forces and the people.’ The projects – run by BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, France’s Total SA and Norway’s Statoil ASA – upgrade heavy, tar-like crude into more marketable oils and are considered Venezuela’s most promising. As older fields elsewhere go into decline, development of the Orinoco is seen as key to Venezuela’s future production. Negotiations over the takeover have yet to yield an agreement and are expected to be difficult as the companies seek a deal that takes into account more than $17 billion in investments and loans related to the projects. […]
BERKELEY, CA — Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key – the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved. A study led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley reports that the answer lies in quantum mechanical effects. Results of the study are presented in the April 12, 2007 issue of the journal Nature. ‘We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis,’ said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. ‘This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one.’ Fleming is the Deputy Director of Berkeley Lab, a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, […]
Steorn has released their long promised quarter one update. It consists of a slickly produced 5 minute video of CEO Sean McCarthy in a verdant park setting answering several frequently asked questions. – During the first week of July, Steorn’s device will be given a public demonstration at a location in London. Steorn employees will be on hand to answer questions, and the event will be broadcast in real time over the web. Online spectators will also be able to interact with the Steorn representatives via live chat. While the July event had been indicated earlier, the online component is new and this public announcement commits Steorn to produce by putting their credibility on the line. – Steorn’s ‘Jury of 12’ scientists chosen to test the technology and release their results publicly is actually a jury of 22. Of the 5000 applicants, 1000 were trained scientists. Twenty two were chosen for their expertise and the level of ‘public confidence’ in these candidates. – The jury is currently in the process of reviewing the technology, and will begin testing it within ‘the next couple of months’. As usual, Sean comes across as perfectly confident in the reality […]
Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today. Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman’s bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue. The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm. But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer. ‘Theoretically is it possible,’ Professor Nayernia said. ‘The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or […]
The stereotype of the self-involved, culture-obsessed U.S. college student is wrong, according to a new study. American college students today are actually very engaged in politics to the point that they are much more likely to know the names of their U.S. senators or congressional representatives than the names of winners of ‘American Idol,’ says political scientist Kent E. Portnoy of Tufts University. His analysis of a national survey of 1,000 non-military men and women ages 18 to 24 included equal mixes of college students and non-college students and drew upbeat conclusions about the youngest cohort of potential voters. ‘Young people seem to know more about politics than they know about popular culture,’ he said in a prepared statement. ‘This level of political knowledge stands in stark contrast to the image of young people as uninterested in and ignorant about politics and government.’ Other findings in the study released today by Tufts include: · About 79 percent of the college students and more than 73 percent of the subjects not in college said they voted in the November 2006 elections. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
