Current Events Watch

Boston, MA: House and Senate bills seeking to “tax and regulate the cannabis industry” have been introduced in the Massachusetts legislature.

House Bill 2929 and Senate companion bill S 1801 propose to legally regulate the commercial production and distribution of marijuana for adults over 21 years of age. The passage of these bills would make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to enact a rational public policy for the control and regulation of marijuana.

The bills would impose licensing requirements and excise taxes on the retail sale of cannabis. Adults who possess or grow marijuana for personal use, or who engage in the nonprofit transfer of cannabis, would not be subject to taxation under the law.

“Decades of whispered grumblings about the wisdom and efficacy of prohibition is rapidly giving way to a serious — really serious public discussion about how to replace it,” said former NORML Board Member Richard Evans, who assisted in drafting the legislation. “Those who consider themselves leaders in government and the media have the obligation to either show how prohibition can be made to work, or join in the exploration of alternatives.”

Massachusetts is the second state to consider marijuana regulation legislation this year. In February, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced Assembly Bill 390: The Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. That bill is currently before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety.

Additional information and summaries of H 2929 and S 1801 are available online at: http://www.cantaxreg.com.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or visit: http://www.masscann.org.

Administration tells General Motors, Chrysler to Develop New Restructuring Plans

President Obama announced today that Chrysler and General Motors will not get the additional $21.5 billion they requested in February because his administration has determined the companies’ viability plans are inadequate. Obama said he recognized that with this decision, his administration is asking these companies, unions and workers to make difficult choices and “painful concessions.”

Obamas to use own cash to redecorate White House

The Obamas are using their own money to redecorate the White House residence and Oval Office, forgoing the $100,000 in federal funds that is traditionally allotted to new presidents for such renovation projects.

Toddler caught after 40-foot fall from window

Robert Lemire told the North-Andover (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune newspaper that he was talking on his cell phone Sunday evening outside a pizza shop in Lawrence, about 25 miles north of Boston, when he saw the toddler dangling from a window across the street. The 45-year-old father of two bolted across a busy street, where he met 23-year-old Alex Day, who had been inside the home at a Bible study meeting. Together, they caught the 18-month-old before she hit the ground.

Global ‘cyber spy’ network revealed

A cyber spy network based almost entirely in China has hacked into computer networks around the world, stealing classified information from governments and private organizations in more than 100 countries, a team of Canadian researchers has reported. The system, dubbed “GhostNet” by the researchers, infiltrated networks in dozens of embassies, foreign ministries, government departments and offices in several cities belonging to the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile, the Canadian team said.

Healthcare reform vital, U.S. health agency says

Reform of the U.S. healthcare system is vital this year because of growing costs and worsening care, the Health and Human Services Department said in a report on Monday. The HHS report, published at (http://www.healthreform.gov), compiles findings of dozens of studies that have been used to justify calls for a complete overhaul of the healthcare system.

Obama expected to sign wilderness bill

A bill to set aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as protected wilderness will be signed Monday by President Barack Obama. The bill - a collection of nearly 170 separate measures - represents one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a quarter-century. It confers the government’s highest level of protection on land in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia. 

Supreme Court Won’t Revive Anti-Spam Law

The Supreme Court will not consider reinstating Virginia’s anti-spam law, among the nation’s toughest in banning unsolicited e-mails. The court on Monday said it will leave in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional because it prohibited political, religious and other messages in addition to commercial solicitations. Virginia was the only state to ban non-commercial spam e-mail.

UK plans to sell off nuclear clean up authority

Britain’s government said Monday it was putting the body responsible for decommissioning and cleaning up the country’s nuclear sites up for sale. Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said the sale of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s commercial arm, UKAEA Ltd., would help save public money. The body is primarily responsible for nuclear decommissioning and waste management, although it also works helping to build new power stations in Britain and abroad.

Citing ‘hearsay,’ Israel ends Gaza deaths probe

Citing insufficient evidence and hearsay, the Israeli military on Monday closed an investigation into two cases of alleged killings of Gaza civilians that had caused an uproar in Israel and around the world.

Sydney power cut blacks out 70,000 businesses and homes

The downtown of Australia’s largest city was plunged into chaos during late Monday rush hour when a power cut blacked out traffic lights, caused gridlock on the roads and left tens of thousands of buildings in darkness.

U.N. Food Agency Chief Warns of Impact of Tighter Credit

Speaking at a biennial U.N. food policy conference in Bangkok, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said the number of undernourished people worldwide continues to rise despite a recent decline in food prices. He also called on leaders to put agricultural investments on the agenda at this week’s Group of 20 summit in London as a way of helping alleviate pain in the developing world from the global economic slowdown. “We’re saying this [situation] is very dangerous — not only is there a food crisis here, it is being worsened by the financial crisis,” he said.

Why Card Check Is Unconstitutional

The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 — otherwise known as “card check” — is organized labor’s dream. As a practical matter, this legislation, pursued by both the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress, would do away with the secret ballot in the unionization process. Although card check’s advocates and critics have spilled much ink arguing about the bill’s fundamental fairness to labor and management, so far the debate has not focused on the other compelling interest at stake: the constitutionally protected right of employees to keep their opinions on controversial issues like unionization to themselves. This is card check’s Achilles’ heel.

OPEC head Angola eyes oil prices at $75 in 2009

Oil prices could reach $75 per barrel in 2009 despite a the economic crisis, OPEC president Angola said on Monday, adding that compliance by the 12-member group with the agreed cuts remained at around 80 percent.

Scientists find safer way to make human stem cells

A team at the University of Wisconsin said they made the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, from human cells without using viruses or exotic genes, which leave behind genetic material that might pose risks if the cells were used as medical therapies.

Obama stirs anxiety in Europe before visit

European leaders will be looking for reassurances from Obama at this week’s G20 summit in London that he will resist domestic pressures to set up new trade barriers and move to rein in the swelling U.S. deficit once the worst of the crisis is over.

Study: Video Gaming May Aid Eyesight

People who used a video-game training program saw improvements in their contrast sensitivity, or the ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, according to a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The training could be beneficial to people who have amblyopia — commonly known as lazy eye — and those who have trouble seeing while driving at night, the study said.

Tesla targets broader audience with electric sedan

Electric car start-up Tesla Motors Inc unveiled its newest, lowest-cost vehicle on Thursday; a family sedan the company says will be the first highway-ready electric vehicle accessible to most car buyers.

Fighting kills at least 14 in Somalia

Fighting between Somali police and Islamist gunmen killed eight people in Mogadishu on Monday, witnesses said, raising the stakes as a new president tries to bring stability to the failed Horn of Africa state.

Pakistani commandos end academy siege

Pakistani commandos re-took control of a police academy in Lahore Monday after militants rampaged through the complex, killing at least eight cadets and wounding scores before holing up inside for hours.

G20 to target protectionism, UK manages expectations

The G20 powers will commit this week to avoiding protectionist measures, a draft statement showed on Monday, as officials acknowledged the summit would fall short of completing a major overhaul of the world economy.

Russian spaceship docks despite engine failure

Astronauts on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft were forced to manually dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after an engine failure knocked out the automatic docking system, Russian space officials said.

Google plans to offer free downloads in China

Trying to gain ground in China, Google, the search engine company, said Monday that it had begun to offer links to free music downloads — a service it does not offer anywhere else in the world.

The next eye-popping construction to grace the skyline of Dubai could be a seawater vertical farm that uses seawater to cool and humidify greenhouses and to convert sufficient humidity back in to fresh water to irrigate the crops.

It may look like the set of a science-fiction blockbuster but this futuristic tower could be the new face of farming in Dubai. Blueprints for the Gulf’s first ‘vertical farm’ have been revealed and could see acres of lush crops cultivated in sleek pods above the emirate’s arid desert. The vertical farm features a soaring spire with pod-like ’sky-gardens’ branching off to give it an organic feel in keeping with designers aims to create a clean, green, sustainable source of food for a more self-sufficient Dubai.

At a time when the world’s population continues to grow, arable land is under threat from deforestation, poor management and global warming. All these factors point to vertical farming being an idea whose time may finally have arrived - and what better place to put it to the test than Dubai. That’s the thinking of Italian architectural firm Studiomobile, who have been working on housing and infrastructure projects in the United Arab Emirates where a lack of fresh water and a high soil value make such a concept feasible.

The concept makes use of the Seawater Greenhouse process, which uses seawater to cool and humidify the air that ventilates the greenhouse and sunlight to distill fresh water from seawater to enable the year round cultivation of high value crops that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to grow in hot, arid regions such as Dubai. This is in stark contrast to costly and energy intensive desalination plants that rely on boiling and pumping to produce fresh water.

The concept works by continually cycling through three phases:

Phase 01

In the first phase the air going into the greenhouse is first cooled and humidified by seawater, which is trickled over the first evaporator to provide a fresh and humid climate for the crops.

Phase 02

Then in the second phase as the air leaves the growing area it passes through the second evaporator, which has seawater flowing over it. The humid air mixes with the warm dry air of the ceiling interspace, making the air much hotter and more humid.

Phase 03

The third and final phase sees the warm air forced upward by the temperature induced stack effect. In the central chimney the warm and humid air condenses when it comes in contact with plastic tubes that contain cool seawater. The drops of fresh water that appear on the surface of the condenser fall into a collection tank to be used to water the crops and for other uses.

At present the design is only a concept, but given Dubai’s love of distinct architecture coupled with their almost complete reliance on trade for food and deficiency of arable land and fresh water, don’t be surprised to see Studiomobile’s seawater vertical farm design appearing on Dubai’s skyline in the future. And if it proves successful there, the lessons learned there could see the concept adapted to help feed ever-growing cities around the globe.

Think Dubai’s seawater farm is cool? Check this out.

Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.

NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s biggest medical research charity will take center stage in the global race to develop blood made from embryonic stem cells. A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of “synthetic” blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos.

The project will be led by Professor Marc Turner, of Edinburgh University, the director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. Professor Turner has been involved in studies investigating how to ensure donated blood is free of the infectious agent behind variant CJD, the human form of “mad cow” disease. Several vCJD patients are thought to have contracted the disease by blood transfusions. The researchers will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those that are genetically programmed to develop into the “O-negative” blood group, which is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection.

This blood group is relatively rare, applicable to about 7 per cent of the population, but it could be produced in unlimited quantities from embryonic stem cells because of their ability to multiply indefinitely in the laboratory.

The aim is to stimulate embryonic stem cells to develop into mature, oxygen-carrying red blood cells for emergency transfusions. Such blood would have the benefit of not being at risk of being infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, or the human form of “mad cow” disease. The military in particular needs a constant supply of fresh, universal donor blood for battlefield situations when normal supplies from donors can quickly run out.

It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood.

More Here, including comments from Prof. Turner

Yesterday was the 20^th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill off the Alaskan coastline. Most of us have moved on and never think about the disastrous oil spill that caused horrendous ecological damage. What you should know is this: it is still a giant mess causing ecological damage. It is just not as blatant these days.

You have to, as Greg Palast said, “ Stick your damn hand in it!” When you do stick your hand under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay it will come out covered in black, sticky goo, oil from the Exxon Valdez spill. Yes, it is still there. Maybe it’s not as visibly obvious as it was twenty years ago, but it is still there, nonetheless.

'Doesn't look done to me' was the photographer's comment when he took this photo on Smith Island, Prince William Sound, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Exxon Valdez case in the summer of 2008. (Photo by Dave Janka, July 1, 2008).

Over the last 20 years, significant progress has been made in restoring areas impacted by the spill: permanently protecting crucial habitat; increasing our knowledge of the marine ecosystem; and developing new tools for better management of these vital resources. Yet the area has not fully recovered. In some areas, Exxon Valdez oil still remains and is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill. Some injured species have yet to recover to pre-spill levels. Some species never will.

This was not expected at the time of the spill or even ten years later. In 1999, beaches in the sound appeared clean on the surface. Some subsurface oil had been reported in a few places, but it was expected to decrease over time and most importantly, to have lost its toxicity due to weathering.

At that time, the majority of species injured by the spill were still struggling with low numbers, such as the depressed herring populations, but it was expected that the ecosystem would recover naturally over time. Now, in 2009, as we reach the end of the second decade, many of these areas and species of concern remain. As we learn more, the picture of recovery is more complicated than was first appreciated.

In the weeks following the spill, oil often lay in some of the semi-enclosed bays for days to weeks, going up and down with the tides twice a day. With the daily stranding of the oil in the intertidal zone, some was pulled down into the sediments by the capillary action of the fine sediments beneath the coarse cobbles. The cleanup efforts and natural processes, particularly in the winter, cleaned the oil out of the top 2-3 inches, where oxygen and water can flow, but did little to affect the large patches of oil farther below the surface.

This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4% per year, with only a 5% chance that the rate is as high as 4%. At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely.

I agree with Palast, it’s enough to make you vomit.

Tim Morgan is a tall fifty-something man with slicked-back hair and ostrich-skin boots who owns a chain of electrical contracting companies. His industry has been hit hard by the downturn, but he has a plan to salvage his business.

Morgan plans to rent roof space from eighty Gainesville businesses and install twenty-five-kilowatt solar generating systems on each of them, for a total of two megawatts-a project that would nearly double Florida’s solar-generating capacity. Already, he has lined up financing, found local contractors to do the installation, and staked claims to the rooftops of at least fifty businesses.

Similar projects abound around Gainesville. Paradigm Properties, a residential real estate company, plans to install photovoltaic arrays on fifty local apartment buildings and its downtown headquarters. Achira Wood, a custom carpentry outlet, is plastering the roof of its workshop-roughly 50,000 square feet of galvanized steel-with solar panels. Interstate Mini Storage is doing the same with its sprawling flat-roofed compound.

Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming?

In a word: policy

In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a “feed-in tariff”-a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production.

This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction-the costs of which are also passed on to the public-everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates.

“More than 80 percent of (solar) installation in Germany comes from facilities under 150 kilowatts in size,” said Mike Antheil with the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy. “Those are the smaller, widespread projects, and that’s the difference between one massive renewable energy farm and solar on every rooftop in Florida.”

To understand why feed-in tariffs are potentially revolutionary, you first have to understand how they differ from the system we’ve been using to drive investment in renewable energy so far. For the last fifteen years, the United States has relied on a patchwork of state subsidies and federal tax breaks-mostly production tax credits for wind power, which let investors take write-offs for the energy produced.

This tax-based system has drawbacks. Because Congress has to renew the tax credits-and has often failed to do so-renewable energy is a risky market. Frenzied bursts of investment are followed by near-total collapse, a pattern that has hampered the growth of our domestic green manufacturing sector. Also, tax incentives (and the quota systems in place in about half of U.S. states) end up favoring large-scale projects, mostly monster wind farms concentrated in remote places like the Texas panhandle.

This has been lucrative for the companies, like GE and Siemens, that build them, but of limited economic benefit to local communities. What’s more, a lot of energy is wasted transporting power from the sparsely populated areas where it’s produced to the cities and coasts -assuming it can be transported at all. Transmission lines are in such short supply that turbines (and occasionally entire wind farms) sometimes have to be shut down because of bottlenecks in the grid.

Feed-in tariffs promise to solve many of these problems by encouraging small, local production, driven not by Wall Street banks but by ordinary entrepreneurs-a system that boosts efficiency and fortifies local economies.

It is well known that hydropower is the most efficient and plentiful of the renewable energy sources. It is one of the oldest sources of energy and was used thousands of years ago to turn a paddle wheel for purposes such as grinding grain.

Prior to the widespread availability of commercial electric power, hydropower was used for irrigation, and operation of various machines, such as watermills, textile machines, sawmills, dock cranes, and domestic lifts.

Hydroelectric power now supplies about 715,000 megawatts or 19% of world electricity. Hydropower makes up roughly 75 percent of renewable energy capacity in the U.S. But a lack of strong growth in recent decades has created a general misperception about how much the industry can expand. As a result, fast-growing industries like wind and solar get all the attention, while some see the hydro industry as fully mature and unable to add more capacity quickly.

That’s not even close to the truth, say industry representatives.

DOE has completed a resource assessment for 49 states (no report was generated for Delaware because of scarce resources). The completed work has identified 5,677 sites in the United States with undeveloped capacity of about 30,000 MW. By comparison, today there is about 80,000 MW of hydroelectric generating plants in the United States.

Hydropower produces essentially no carbon dioxide or other harmful emissions, in contrast to burning fossil fuels. Like every other clean energy technology, hydro has received a significant boost from the stimulus package. The development of new marine energy technologies, expansion of existing hydro facilities and the creation of electrical generation facilities on non-powered dams offer a new range of options for developers.

The skies are dimming, for most of the world.

Increases in airborne pollution have dimmed the skies by blocking sunlight over the past 30 years, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

While decreases in atmospheric visibility — known as global dimming — have been reported in the past, the new study compiles satellite and land-based data dating back to 1973.

“Creation of this database is a big step forward for researching long-term changes in air pollution and correlating these with climate change,” Kaicun Wang, assistant research scientist in the University of Maryland, said in a statement. “And it is the first time we have gotten global long-term aerosol information over land to go with information already available on aerosol measurements over the world’s oceans.”

They reported that dimming is occurring everywhere except Europe, where declines in pollution have resulted in brighter skies.

Changes in aerosols can affect weather and also may have an impact on climate, though past studies have been inconclusive. These pollutants can result in cooling by reflecting sunlight back into space, but they also can absorb solar energy, warming the atmosphere.

Aerosols include soot, dust and sulfur dioxide particles, and typically come from burning fossil fuels and tropical rainforests.

Separate study on ’sunshade’ idea

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meanwhile, warned that suggestions for a high-atmosphere “sunshade” of particles to battle global warming could reduce energy production from solar power plants.

Those proposals are aimed at blocking sunlight that can be absorbed by so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, warming climate.

But airborne particles also scatter light that does get through, and that diffuse light cannot be used by solar energy concentrating systems that produce electricity, Daniel Murphy, a scientist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., reported in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Flat photovoltaic and hot water panels, commonly seen on household roofs, use both diffuse and direct sunlight, so they would be less affected.

There are three new solar power plants in Germany.

As costs fall, thin-film technologies are rapidly taking up a significant share of the PV market. Industry figures give a compound annual growth rate of 60% between 2002 and 2007, and production capacity could reach more than 10 GW in 2010 and 16 GW in 2012.

The thin-film sector is not only a very dynamic market, but also one that benefits from significant potential for development. Scaling factors, efficiency gains and the new production technologies are expected to continue to reduce thin-film module manufacturing costs.

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association’s (EPIA) International Thin Film Conference was a clear signal of growing confidence in the sector. Held in November 2008, the event was the first EPIA event to focus on thin-film. With over 350 participants in attendance, the conference, held in Munich, Germany, heard that more than 150 companies had already entered the thin-film business, with some 40 of these already in production.

The subtitle of the conference: ‘Thin Film goes Large!’ seemed particularly appropriate, given that Germany is host to a range of thin-film projects that more than illustrate the technology’s potential. With three new large-scale thin-film PV installations recently commissioned, Germany can provide an excellent insight into the real cut and thrust of the thin-film market.

Germany’s new solar installations:

1. The head office of Riedel Recycling has been home to Germany’s largest pitched-roof thin-film plant since October 2008. American manufacturer First Solar supplied the over 450 CdTe modules required for the plant. Owners and brothers Ludger and Norbert Riedel “want a sustainable investment that pays off and fits well with our company philosophy”.
2. Conergy Deutschland GmbH on behalf of local utility group Stadtwerke Trier recently built a thin-film installation in Trier near Germany’s border with Luxembourg. The installation includes more than 112,500 thin-film modules, again supplied by First Solar. “We’re proud that our plant is immediately producing environmentally friendly electricity for homes in Trier,’ said Rudolf Schöller, the project manager at SWT responsible for the solar park.
3. Waldpolenz Energy Park in Brandis, near Leipzig is the world’s biggest thin-film solar PV power plant. The juwi group – based in Bolanden, southwestern Germany– built the thin-film solar power station in the eastern German state of Saxony.

It’s noteworthy that all three of these projects use modules manufactured by First Solar.

With a range of large-scale projects already in operation, thin-film is rapidly establishing itself as a market force to be reckoned with, both in Germany and around the world.

Conergy Deutschland managing director Jochen Kirmaier said: “In light of the current capital market crisis, solar energy has now become a safe and sought-after investment.”

Germany is demonstrating the capabilities of renewable energies. Solar electricity is not only good for the environment; it also builds independence from expensive energy imports and creates new jobs.

… to farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands.

HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759, the so called “food safety” bills in Congress were written by the nation-less corporations such as: Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc. These bills are all associated with the opposite of food safety.

As we face an unprecedented economic crisis, and it is hard to be sure what has value, one thing that always does is food. Which is why the corporations are after absolute control over it. But what obstacles to a complete lock on food do they face? All the people in this country who are “banking” on organic farming and urban gardens and most of all, everyone’s deepening pleasure in and increasing involvement with everything about food.

Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.

Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively getting involved in, and things we very much need to limit your food to what comes from your region and from real farmers, and slow down to cook it and linger over it with friends and family, and the world begins to change for the better.

Human beings are resilient and clever, and left to their own devices would handle this unbelievable disaster the financial corporations brought us by being productive in real ways and locally. And farming is the solid ground under that. Farmers produce something of real value (something we used to take for granted), and from that base, businesses grow up. Local markets, local food processors, local seed companies, local tool and supply companies, local stores … and an economy based on reality and something truly good for us, too, begins to grow.

And isn’t that what it’s really all about?

source

Law enforcement officers know that someone in diabetic shock can appear to be intoxicated, but it’s not always easy to tell the difference.

When the blood sugar is too low, the body can emit the same sweet odor as an intoxicated person. Sometimes diabetics with low blood sugar can be combative, too. A diabetic alert sticker should help officers to quickly realize that the driver may actually be in need of a trip to the hospital rather than a trip to jail.

These stickers will assist law enforcement in looking at the possibilities, instead of being forced to assume that an individual is intoxicated. The sticker will alert officers to the possibility that the driver may require medical attention.

The sticker notifies any law enforcement officers or other emergency personnel who may come upon the vehicle to check the driver for a medical alert bracelet/necklace if he or she is non-responsive. The sticker, which is approximately 3 by 5 inches, features an embellished red cross design on a yellow and white background. Written across the design is the notification that “a diabetic may be the primary driver of the vehicle.” A registration number has also been included on the stickers. Since the number will be registered back to a particular person, law enforcement officers can potentially use the number to access important information about a driver should the driver be non-responsive and not be wearing an alert bracelet or necklace. To obtain a sticker, eligible citizens need to supply the Police Department with a signed note from their physician detailing their diabetic condition.

I saw this in the local news and thought this was a great idea that should be implemented on a national level. There are only two communities that I know of here in Oklahoma who are using this sticker program.

Some people will be worried about privacy issues and possible abuse of the system.

I can’t answer the privacy concerns, but it’s not like we have much privacy in this country anyway. The abuse issues should be taken care of with the registration numbers and physician’s verification of the driver’s medical condition. The police should be trained and given tools that enable them to tell the difference between drunks and distressed diabetics. Hopefully this sticker will be just one of many tools in a LEO’s chest of law enforcement equipment.

Kevlar is nice and all, but the next bullet-proof vest might be made of sticky goo A new shock-absorbent gel is hoping to save the lives of British soldiers by substantially reinforcing their helmets.

The gel, called d3O, locks instantly into a solidified form when it is hit at high impact. It is hoped that the shock-absorbing substance will soon be fitted onto the inside of soldiers’ helmets reducing by half the kinetic energy of a bullet or piece of shrapnel and hopefully making them impenetrable.

This gooey substance is pretty amazing stuff, and could have many uses. The d3O gel has already expanded into a range of sporting goods and is found in ski gloves, shin guards, ballet shoe pointes and horse-riding equipment.

The secret to how the gel works rests in chemistry (not magic), as inventor Richard Palmer explained to the Telegraph: “The substance relies on “intelligent molecules” that “shock lock” together to absorb energy and create a solid pad. When moved slowly, the molecules will slip past each other, but in a high-energy impact they will snag and lock together, becoming solid, in doing so they absorb energy. Once the pressure has gone they return to their normal flexible state “

The gel is stitched into clothing or equipment that is supple until it stiffens into a protective barrier on impact. It could be used to reduce the current bulky and restrictive armor used by troops on the frontline with gel pads inserted into key protective areas.

Mr. Palmer said it was the equivalent to comparing “cumbersome” RoboCop to Spiderman with the latter’s protection “nimble, covert and flexible”.

The alternatives

Silicon cells, which have dominated the market since its commercial launch in the 1950s, may still represent viable competition to Thin Film technology. Silicon cells have an average cell conversion efficiency of around 16-20% while Thin Film CdTe panels are only 10.6% efficient. Due to the enormous growth experienced by the Solar industry in recent years, the price of raw silicon peaked in 2008 at $1000/kg which has kept the manufacturing cost of silicon based cells fluctuating between $3 and $4 per watt. Now that increased silicon production capacity has caught up with demand from the solar cell industry and the Global financial downturn has reduced demand from the computer chip industry, the price of silicon has dropped to under $40/kg. The result - we can expect to see substantial deductions in the cost of silicon solar cells in the near future.

There are also other technologies on the horizon including cells based on copper indium gallium ­diselenide (CIGS), silicon on glass, and the combination of ­germanium, gallium arsenide, and gallium ­indium phosphide all of which are competing to lower the cost of solar cells.

Leading the way in this space is Nanosolar Inc., a private Palo Alto company founded in 2001.

In the course of their work, Nanosolar engineers developed a way to imbed a compound called CIGS into thin polymer films. This metallic compound is the key to the entire process. It contains copper, indium, gallium and selenium. Without these metals the production of these films is impossible.

Last June Nanosolar announced that they were going to build the world’s largest factory for making solar power cells.

Once started, the Nanosolar plant will produce a new type of material that will blow away the existing silicon based panels at 1/10 of the cost. And in doing so, this new technology promises to make solar competitive with fossil based fuels- even if those fuels drop drastically in prices.

Even more stunning was the capacity of the plant itself. According to Nanosolar’s CEO, Martin Roschesien, the plant will turn out enough solar cells each year to generate 430 megawatts. That’s enough electricity to power about 325,000 homes.

With these two companies and others like them making such advances, it is easy to see why “green” writers are calling them “the solar equivalent of the Holy Grail.”

There is actually a bona fide revolution going on in solar power. And it’s the kind of revolution that is quickly beginning to disconnect the industry from the chains have that shackled it to the price of a barrel of oil or its equivalent in natural gas.

Leading this stunning transformation, as usual is a next generation technology. It’s called thin film solar. It’s smaller, cheaper, and more efficient than its silicon based predecessors and it now stands poised to shake the industry from out of its doldrums.

In fact, its emergence into the market is expected to help the solar industry grow from $11 billion in 2005 to $51 billion in 2015 according to a projection by Clean Edge Inc., a market research firm that is focused on clean technology.

And since those numbers are hardly the types of figures that you can roll your eyes at, numerous companies are working to stake themselves a thin film claim.

Arizona based First Solar has achieved a major milestone in reducing the manufacturing cost for solar panels below the $1 per watt price barrier - the target necessary for solar to compete with coal-burning electricity on the grid or grid-parity. Using cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology in its thin-film photovoltaic cells, First Solar claims to have the lowest manufacturing cost per watt in the industry with the ability to make solar cells at 98 cents per watt, one third of the price of comparable standard silicon panels. The efficiency is in part due to a low cycle time - 2.5 hours from sheet of glass to solar module - about a tenth of the time it takes for silicon equivalents.

Thin film cadmium telluride solar panels have an active element just a hundredth the thickness of silicon used in conventional solar panels built on a glass substrate, facilitating the production of large panels. The process and machinery used is so secret that visitors to the company’s 500 megawatt production facility are barred from getting an up close look at the production line.

First Solar began full commercial operation of its initial manufacturing line in late 2004. From 2004 through today, manufacturing capacity has grown 2,500 percent to more than 500 megawatts in 2008. The company expects its annual production capacity to double in 2009 to more than 1 gigawatt, the equivalent of an average-sized nuclear power plant. These escalating volumes have been accompanied by a rapid reduction in manufacturing costs. From 2004 through today, First Solar’s manufacturing costs have declined two-thirds from over $3 per watt to less than $1 per watt and the company is confident that further significant cost reductions are possible based on the yet untapped potential of its technology and manufacturing process.

more tomorrow…

Ford’s concept car for the 2009 Geneva Motor Show is the Iosis MAX, termed by Ford as a Multi Activity Vehicle (MAV) in that it showcases flexibility of purpose, new door opening concepts, lightweight materials and advanced aerodynamics. The Iosis MAX also offers a preview of Ford’s global EcoBoost petrol engine technology coming in 2010.

Ford’s Press release:

Styled by a team led by Martin Smith, Ford of Europe’s executive design director, the car’s dramatic looks and striking pearlescent ‘Limelight’ color are complemented by innovative solutions which enhance its practicality and environmental performance.

Coupled to this clean engine are the recently introduced and acclaimed Ford PowerShift transmission, plus a new Ford Auto-Start-Stop system also due for production in 2010.

“The Iosis MAX marks the next stage in the evolution of kinetic design, and showcases a number of affordable engine technologies that will make a difference to the environment and our customers’ pockets,” says Martin Smith, Ford of Europe’s Executive Design Director.

“Our designers have stretched themselves beyond the two previous Iosis concepts, and have applied kinetic design form language to a MAV,” adds Smith. “The Iosis MAX proves that cars in the compact MAV class can have emotive, dynamic styling without sacrificing their traditional virtues of practicality or efficiency – something that the larger and revolutionary S-MAX has already demonstrated.”

“Although the Iosis MAX isn’t a forerunner to a specific production vehicle, it clearly highlights how kinetic design is evolving and can be applied with stunning results to all vehicles in the Ford portfolio.”

Exciting, Dynamic Design

The design team sought to create a strong impression of lightness and efficiency. The feeling of lightness is reinforced by the extensive use of glass in the vehicle, with the steeply raked front screen flowing back in one piece to the tailgate, revealing the skeletal roof structure underneath.

The front of the Iosis MAX is dominated by the bold trapezoidal lower grille, which is now a key part of the Ford brand identity. For the first time, however, the grille features a distinctive new treatment with three horizontal chrome-rimmed bars, giving the vehicle’s face a more dynamic and imposing feel.

Imaginative details catch the eye all around the vehicle, including the striking new graphics for the front and rear lamps, stylish LED lighting strips in the rocker panels, and stunning 19-inch alloy wheels with a lightweight two-piece construction.

Dramatic Interior Environment

The Iosis MAX interior presents a bold evolution of the kinetic design language used on the exterior, incorporating dynamic shapes and advanced materials to create an interior environment which is light, spacious and expressive.

A key part of the Iosis MAX interior concept is the spine-like bridge which runs the full length of the interior from the bulkhead through to the rear load area.

The bridge supports the center console, and provides a mounting point for the four individual seats and central armrests. The seats are cantilevered from the bridge, allowing for an uninterrupted floor space and giving occupants the sensation that they are ‘floating on air’.

The innovative use of shapes and materials is also reflected in the center console, which has a smooth plexiglass surface that rolls down from the instrument panel like a ribbon and flows through to the rear of the passenger compartment.

The whole of the console surface acts as a touch-screen display to control the vehicle’s systems.