Wind power faces difficult obstacles, but its supporters can at least point to wind farms already in operation. By contrast, tidal power, often touted as an environmentally friendly alternative, has struggled. A firm quoted on London’s Alternative Investment Market believes it is on to the next big thing in carbon-neutral energy - wave power. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is one of four companies whose hardware is to be tried out in a wave-power project off the coast of Cornwall. Electricity should start coming ashore in 2010. Over several decades, a range of technologies have been used to capture wave power. The Cornwall project, called Wavehub, will experiment with four approaches. One involves a floating platform in which waves push air through turbines. A second exploits tidal flow rather than waves. The third system - from Scotland’s Pelamis - uses a series of floating tubes joined by hinges: as they move relative to one another, power is generated. Then there is OPT’s system. It consists of a steel column that sits vertically in the water. A collar like a huge doughnut moves up and down the column as waves pass. That movement drives a generator and […]
Less able to achieve their life goals, women end up unhappier than men later in life, even though they start out happier, a new survey of Americans suggests. Early in adult life, women are more likely than men to fulfill their family life and financial aspirations, leading to greater overall happiness. Later in life, however, the tables turn and men report coming closer to reaching their goals for consumer goods and family life. Men are more satisfied with their financial situation and family life, and are happier than women in later life, the study shows. Here are some age milestones found in the study, detailed in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies: * 41: Age at which men’s financial satisfaction exceeds women’s financial satisfaction. * 48: Age at which men’s overall happiness exceeds women’s overall happiness. * 64: Age at which men’s satisfaction with family life exceeds women’s satisfaction. Marriage and money In two nationally representative surveys of men and women in the United States, the researchers found that happiness and satisfaction with life boil down to the gap […]
When bringing fewer outfits still left no space in her bag, Phoenix social worker Melissa Meierdirks decided to ship home her purchases during a business trip to Denver recently, ‘just to avoid the extra bag or the extra weight that could be charged for my bag.’ Instead of trying to cram sweatshirts and glass souvenirs into an already-full bag to be checked on her flight home, Meierdirks shipped her mementos in one box via FedEx to the tune of about $30. Meierdirks is among throngs of travelers trying to shed some weight from their baggage to trim the high cost of flying with it. Major airlines including United Airlines, US Airways and American Airlines have begun charging $15 to check the first bag and $25 for the second to counter high jet-fuel costs that are siphoning their profits. Air Transport Association spokeswoman Victoria Day estimates the airline industry will spend $61 billion this year on fuel, $20 billion more than last year. United alone is looking at a $3.5 billion increase; spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said all of the $275 million it hopes to earn in baggage-handling fees will go toward paying that off. The fee changes […]
SAN DIEGO — Federal law does not pre-empt state law in a court battle over the licensing of medical marijuana, an appeals court has ruled. San Diego and San Bernardino counties had argued that issuing identification cards to eligible users, as required by the 1996 state law, would violate federal law, which does not recognize the state measure. But the appeals court concluded Thursday that ID card laws ‘do not pose a significant impediment’ to the federal Controlled Substances Act because that law is designed to ‘combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practices.’ San Diego supervisors had sued to overturn the state law after it was passed by voters in 1996, but a Superior Court judge ruled against them in 2006. The county appealed last year and was joined by San Bernardino. The counties have 40 days to either appeal Thursday’s ruling to the California Supreme Court or implement an ID card program. ‘The court didn’t really get to the key issue,’ said Thomas D. Bunton, senior deputy county counsel in San Diego. ‘(Federal law) clearly regulates medical practices. It says marijuana has no currently accepted medical use.’
WASHINGTON — New estimates show that least 56,000 people become infected with the AIDS virus every year in the United States — 40 percent more than previous calculations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday. The CDC stressed that actual infection rates have not risen but said better methods of measuring newly diagnosed infections and extrapolating these to the general population led to the higher estimates. ‘CDC’s first estimates from this system reveal that the HIV epidemic is — and has been — worse than previously known. Results indicate that approximately 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in the United States in 2006,’ the CDC said in a statement. ‘This figure is roughly 40 percent higher than CDC’s former estimate of 40,000 infections per year, which was based on limited data and less precise methods.’ The CDC said the epidemic has been stable since the late 1990s, ‘though the number of new HIV infections remains unacceptably high.’ ‘The analysis shows that new infections peaked in the mid-1980s at approximately 130,000 infections per year and reached a low of about 50,000 in the early 1990s,’ it said. Dr. Kevin Fenton, who heads […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
