NEW YORK — Already feeling the effects of a cold snap in the Midwest and Northeast and strains with key oil supplier Venezuela, American energy consumers are about to encounter a new complication: rising prices of a key gasoline additive – nicknamed liquid gold by some. As a result of this cost increase, some analysts are predicting that the price at the pump could reach as high as $3.50 a gallon this spring, compared with $2.93 a gallon currently. Behind the predicted price spike are problems with obtaining alkylates – the additive. But even before that had time to kick in, prices surged 23 cents a gallon between Sunday and Monday in seven states, reports GasPriceWatch.com. In Dayton, Ohio, for example, gasoline prices rose overnight from $2.82 a gallon to $3.05 a gallon, says Brad Proctor, CEO of the website. ‘The national price is probably going to rise 3 cents a gallon overnight,’ he says, blaming rising tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who threatened Sunday to cut off oil supplies to the United States. ‘They represent 12 percent of our oil supply,’ says Mr. Proctor. Yet the rising gasoline prices in the Midwest have not […]
The U.S. population will soar to 438 million by 2050 and the Hispanic population will triple, according to projections released Monday by the Pew Research Center. The latest projections by the non-partisan research group are higher than government estimates to date and paint a portrait of an America dramatically different from today’s. The projected growth in the U.S. population – 303 million today – will be driven primarily by immigration among all groups except the elderly. ‘We’re assuming that the rate of immigration will stay roughly constant,’ says Jeffrey Passel, co-author of the report. Even if immigration is limited, Hispanics’ share of the population will increase because they have higher birth rates than the overall population. That’s largely because Hispanic immigrants are younger than the nation’s aging baby boom population. By 2030, all 79 million boomers will be at least 65 and the elderly will grow faster than any other age group. The projections show that by 2050: ¢Nearly one in five Americans will have been born outside the USA vs. one in eight in 2005. Sometime between 2020 and 2025, the percentage of foreign-born will surpass the historic peak reached a century ago […]
Surprising research suggests a popular artificial sweetener has the unexpected and unwelcome effect of packing on the pounds. Purdue researchers report that saccharin altered the ability of rats to control their appetites. However, the head of an artificial sweetener trade group scoffed at the findings, saying they don’t necessarily translate to humans. ‘We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food,’ said study author Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behavior Research Institute at Purdue University. ‘The take-home message is that consumption of artificially sweetened products may interfere with an automatic process.’ That process, she said, involves the body’s ability to detect that it will soon be full. ‘We often will stop eating before we’ve been able to absorb all of the calories that come from a meal. One of the reasons we might stop eating is that our experience has taught in the past that, ‘After I eat this food, I’ll feel this full for this long,’ ‘ she explained. It seems to be a subconscious process based on automatic estimations of how much energy certain foods will provide, she said. […]
A seagoing glider that uses heat energy from the ocean to propel itself is the first ‘green’ robot to explore the undersea environment, U.S. researchers say. They said the glider had crisscrossed the 13,000-foot-deep Virgin Islands Basin between St. Thomas and St. Croix more than 20 times since it was launched in December. And it could keep going on its own for another six months, predicted the team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is on Cape Cod, and Webb Research, a company based in Falmouth, Mass. Green glider ‘Gliders can be put to work on tasks that humans wouldn’t want to do or cannot do because of time and cost concerns,’ Dave Fratantoni of Woods Hole said Thursday. ‘They can work around the clock in all weather conditions.’ Such a robot can carry sensors to measure temperature, salinity, and biological productivity. The glider surfaces from time to time to fix its positions using the Global Positioning System and to communicate via Iridium satellite to a laboratory on the shore. Most gliders rely on battery-powered motors and mechanical pumps, the researchers said. This one draws its energy from the differences in temperature between […]
ATHENS, Greece — Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once thought, paleontologists said Friday. Analysis of the tooth — part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece — showed the ancient human had spent at least part of its life away from the area where it died. ‘Neanderthal mobility is highly controversial,”said paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Some experts believe Neanderthals roamed over very limited areas, but others say they must have been more mobile, particularly when hunting, Harvati said. Until now, experts only had indirect evidence, including stone used in tools, Harvati said. ‘Our analysis is the first that bringsevidence from a Neanderthal fossil itself,” she said. The findings by the Max Planck Institute team were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The tooth was found in a seaside excavation in Greece’ssouthern Peloponnese region in 2002. The team analyzed tooth enamel for ratios of a strontiumisotope, a naturally occurring metal found in food and water. Levels of the metal vary in different areas. Eleni Panagopoulou of the Paleoanthropology-SpeleologyDepartment […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
