WASHINGTON — Personal incomes plunged in July while consumer spending slowed significantly as the impact of billions of dollars in government rebate checks began to wane. The Commerce Department reported Friday that personal incomes fell by 0.7 percent in July, the biggest drop in nearly three years and a far larger decline than the 0.1 percent decrease analysts expected. Consumer spending edged up a modest 0.2 percent, in line with expectations, but far below June’s 0.6 percent rise. When the impact of rising prices was factored in, spending actually dropped by 0.4 percent in July, the weakest showing for inflation-adjusted spending in more than four years. The July performance for incomes and spending reinforced worries that the economy, which posted better-than-expected growth in the spring because of the rebate checks, could stumble in coming months as their impact fades. Some economists worry that overall economic growth, which rose at a 3.3 percent annual rate from April-June, could come in at less than half that pace in the current quarter, and could actually dip into negative territory in the final three months of this year and the first quarter of 2009. Back-to-back declines in the gross […]
A New Jersey company said on Tuesday it will invest $20 million over three years to develop an underground compressed-air storage system for wind turbines and other power sources, a sign of growing confidence in the technology. Energy Storage and Power is a joint ventured formed by energy developer PSEG Global and Michael Nakhamkin, who designed the only compressed air-storage facility in the U.S. With Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), air is pumped into underground formations, such as depleted natural gas wells or salt caverns, using a natural gas-powered machine. The pressured air is released later to drive a turbine to make electricity. The system allows for several hours or even days of stored energy, which allows power producers to deliver electricity during peak hours when the demand for electricity–and price–is highest. The two CAES plants in operation right now–one in McIntosh, Ala., and the other in Huntorf, Germany–use several hours of storage to generate electricity during the middle of the day. Energy Storage and Power said that it intends to develop equipment for storing renewable power resources at a large scale. Utilities are already using more wind and solar, but energy storage means that […]
For the first time ever, both the Northwest and the Northeast Passages are free of ice. Shipping companies have been waiting for this moment for years, but they will have to wait a little while longer before they can make use of the Arctic shortcut. Shippers in Bremen are getting impatient. The Beluga Group, a shipping company based in the northern German city, had planned to send a ship through the Northeast Passage — or the Northern Sea Route, as Russians call it — this summer, according to spokeswoman Verena Beckhausen. The route leads from the Russian island Novaya Zemlya, off the northern coast of Siberia, through the Bering Strait between far eastern Russia and Alaska. This route is radically shorter than the normal trip through the Suez Canal. From Hamburg to the Japanese port city of Yokohama, for example, the trip using the northern route is just 7,400 nautical miles — just 40 percent of the 11,500 nautical mile haul through the Suez. Dangerous ice floes normally block the shorter route, but as of a few days ago the Northeast Passage is ice-free according to Christian Melsheimer of the University of Bremen. Scientists at the university use […]
Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research. Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive. The experiments, detailed online yesterday in the journal Nature, raise the prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies. ‘It’s kind of an extreme makeover of a cell,’ said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research. ‘The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It’s very exciting.’ The work was hailed as a welcome development even by critics of research involving embryonic stem cells, which can be coaxed to become any tissue in […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
