Hydrogen may well be the new gasoline. But where’s the nearest ‘gas’ station where you can pull up and refuel your energy-efficient vehicle? Will hydrogen stations be strategically convenient-located on street corners and travel-stop locations around the globe? What marketing development obstacles need to be overcome if hydrogen vehicles are ever to penetrate the transportation system and gain widespread acceptance? According to an article by James Winebrake and Patrick Meyer in Technovation: The International Journal of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Technology Management, there are a number of barriers to overcome before the hydrogen-fuel infrastructure becomes efficient, affordable and publicly accepted. However, both agree the 100-year reign of petroleum as the dominant transportation fuel is coming to an end-due to mounting prices, scarcity, and a need to reduce environmentally degrading emissions. Winebrake, professor and chair of the Department of Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Meyer, an RIT alumnus and a doctoral candidate at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware, believe the use of hydrogen technology in transportation systems bears a direct relationship to the ‘chicken and egg’ phenomenon. ‘Consumers will not purchase hydrogen […]
Internal medicine appears to be the last option of medical students when it comes to choose medicine as a career specialty according to a survey published in the September 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings were first presented at the Society of General Internal Medicine’s annual meeting in April being accompanied by a research letter about the salaries of the nation’s doctors. The survey made on 1,177 respondents at 11 US medical schools shockingly revealed that only 2 percent of them planned to pursue careers in general internal medicine. Back in 1990, a similar survey revealed that 9 percent of those interviewed would choose internal medicine. ‘It’s getting increasingly difficult to find a (family medicine) doctor especially in rural areas. It’s a tenuous situation as students look to careers that are financially rewarding because they have a lot of debt and they’re looking away from primary care,’ Dr. Mark H. Ebell, the study’s author and a primary care doctor at the University of Georgia, said. For example, medical students owe a median of $140,000 in student loan when they graduate. There are many reasons for which medical students look away […]
Winter viruses and the wettest August for years have combined to leave Britain’s beehives dry In 26 years of beekeeping, Ged Marshall has never seen anything as bad as the 2008 honey harvest. A miserable summer that has confined his bees to their hives following a winter bedevilled by deadly viruses means that production this year will be barely a third of its usual level of around five tonnes of honey. Unfortunately for the nation’s honey lovers and apiarists, Mr Marshall’s experience is far from unique. According to the British Beekeepers’ Association (BBKA), up to a third of Britain’s 240,000 hives failed to survive last winter and spring due to disease and poor weather. The result is a drop of more than 50 per cent in honey production across the country. Rowse, the UK’s biggest honey supplier, warned yesterday that the harvest has been so poor that major supermarkets will run out of stocks of English honey before Christmas. A global shortfall in production from Argentina to Australia has also driven up raw honey prices by 60 per cent in the last 12 months. Mr Marshall, 53, who keeps more than 500 hives around the country […]
OTTAWA — The world’s intellectual property system is broken. It’s stopping lifesaving technologies from reaching the people who need them most in developed and developing countries, according to the authors of a report released in Ottawa today by an international coalition of experts. ‘We found the same stumbling blocks in the traditional communities of Brazil as we did in the boardroom of a corporation that holds the patent to a gene that can determine the chance a woman will develop breast cancer,’ said Richard Gold, professor of intellectual property at McGill University and chair of the International Expert Group that produced the report. ‘Most striking is that no matter where we looked, the lack of trust played a vital role in blocking negotiations that could have benefited both sides, as well as the larger public.’ The report is the result of seven years of work by Gold and his colleagues, experts in law, ethics and economics Gold said that the authors based their report on revelations that came out of discussions with policy-makers, industry representatives, scientists and academics from around the world, as well as the outcomes of a series of case studies involving Brazil, Canada, Kenya the […]
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis to be published Friday in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually ‘carbon sinks’ – they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries. However, these old growth forests around the world are not protected by international treaties and have been considered of no significance in the national ‘carbon budgets’ as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol. That perspective was largely based on findings of a single study from the late 1960s which had become accepted theory, and scientists now say it needs to be changed. ‘Carbon accounting rules for forests should give credit for leaving old growth forest intact,’ researchers from Oregon State University and several other institutions concluded in their report. ‘Much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed.’ The analysis of 519 different plot studies found that about 15 percent of the forest land in the Northern Hemisphere is unmanaged primary forests with large amounts of old growth, and that rather than being irrelevant to the Earth’s carbon budget, they may account for […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
