DENVER — Since the arrival of the white settlers, the American West has been shaped by the discovery and extraction of natural resources, beginning in the 19th century with silver and gold and then extending to timber, copper, uranium and fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. For decades, the industries that grew around these resources mined state capitals as thoroughly as they did the riches beneath the earth. As recently as three decades ago, the Mountain West states erupted in what was known as the ‘sagebrush rebellion’ – a loud and sustained clamor from the extraction industries and their political allies for the federal government to open millions of acres of public land for resource exploration and development. But that has changed. In less than a generation, the sagebrush rebellion has given way across the West to a renewable revolution. Today, from the Rockies to the Pacific, a new political axis is emerging that could transform the national debate over energy, the environment and global warming. ‘It’s a massive shift in not just policy but ¦ voter attitudes,’ said Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and presidential candidate. Across the West, […]
TOKYO — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (Nachrichten) is stepping up its renewable energy power systems business, with plans to introduce an industry-leading wind turbine model in Europe by 2010 and establish additional manufacturing bases for solar-cell panels overseas, the Nihon Keizai shimbun reported. The wind turbine for the European market will feature output of 5 megawatts, compared with the 2-3 mw models currently available. A single unit will be capable of generating enough power for 4,000 households, it said. The industrial machinery conglomerate has focused on the US, but now plans to expand into Europe, which accounts for 70 pct of the global market. It aims to raise wind turbine production, currently just under 700 mw a year in terms of total output, to 2,000 mw by 2010, hoping to boost sales five-fold from 2006 to more than 200 bln yen, the paper said. The firm plans to expand production of photovoltaic panels to 10 sites. The Netherlands and Spain are among four candidate countries in Europe, with California and Pennsylvania under consideration in the US, it said. Mitsubishi Heavy’s power systems business generates annual sales of about 700 bln yen, primarily from fossil-fuel plants. By […]
A global project to catalogue every species on the planet has reached a milestone with the announcement that it has passed the one-millionth entry. Six years into the Species 2000 programme, researchers say they now have 1,009,000 living organisms contained within their databases. They hope to complete the basic listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of 1.75 million species, although experts within the programme believe that the actual number of different living organisms is between eight and 12 million. Professor Thomas Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, said the finished catalogue would list all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and micro-organisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses. ‘Many are surprised that, despite over two centuries of work by biologists and the current worldwide interest in biodiversity, there is currently no comprehensive catalogue of all known species of organisms on Earth,’ Prof Orrell said. The listing does not include fossil species from the past. It does include elephants, elephant seals, elephant grass and elephant trunk fish, as well as a shark and a virus both with the word elephant in their names. […]
A common herbal extract available in health food stores could potentially enhance the ability of antibiotics to kill the bacteria that cause 90 percent of infections in the bladder and can greatly reduce recurrence of urinary tract infections, according to a new study published the results online April 8, 2007, in the journal Nature Medicine. One of the problems with urinary tract infections is that the infections may return after treatments with antibiotics due to the fact that cells lining the ladder may shield the bacteria from being killed by antibiotics. In the study conducted in mice, researchers at Duke University Medical Center conducted a series of experiments and found that urinary tract infections can return and also forskalin can force out 75 percent of bacteria hosted in the cells. Forskalin is an extract from the Indian coleus plant. And it has been found in early studies that it can be used as a vasodilator, weight loss aid, a supplement to fight against glaucoma in addition to reduction of urinary tract infections and enhancement of the ability of antibiotics to kill bacteria that normally survive, according to wikipedia. Urinary tract infections in the bladders infect women four […]
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx’s proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe’s drops as fertility falls. ‘Flashmobs’ – groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups. This is the world in 30 years’ time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the ‘future strategic context’ likely to face Britain’s armed forces. It includes an ‘analysis of the key risks and shocks’. Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD’s Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as ‘probability-based, rather than predictive’. The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls ‘declining news quality’ with the rise of ‘internet-enabled, citizen-journalists’ and pressure to release stories ‘at the expense of facts’. It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed. New weapons An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
