• The Environment

    Invention Awards: A Generator That Runs on Kitchen Grease

    By Gregory Mone Posted on 5.28.2009 7 Comments

    Today's featured Invention Award winner kills two birds with one stone: providing a simple and cheap alternative energy source while widening the market for delicious fried foods. Everybody wins! The nondescript six-foot-tall box behind Finz restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, looks like a tool shed, but actually it's a self-contained grease refinery and five-kilowatt generator. Engineer James Peret's Vegawatt is the first all-in-one device that processes grease to continuously provide a building with electricity and hot water, heralding a significant change in alternative-fuel applications. "It's a brilliant idea," says Josh Tickell, author of Biodiesel America. "A waste stream to an energy source, with no intermediary."

    5.29.2009 at 02:22pm - Comment by I.Q.142

    The $300,000 price tag was to build the prototype, if and hopefully when it is massed produced you could see it sell for a tenth or less than the original cost. Also considering coal power is the MOST polluting power source we have it stands to reason that it would pollute less. Not to mention the value of not being dependent on a central power grid. We need more inventors and innovators like Mr. Peret.

  • Cars

    Power Struggle

    By Seth Fletcher Posted on 10.29.2008 73 Comments

    The battery that will power the Chevrolet Volt weighs approximately 400 pounds and, stood on end, reaches a height of six feet. The $10,000-plus, T-shaped monolith contains 300 individual three-volt lithium-ion cells, bundled together in groups of three, then wired in series and kept from overheating by an elaborate liquid cooling mechanism.

    10.29.2008 at 02:48am - Comment by I.Q.142

    GM is full of it. Even if you exclude the EV1, what about the t-zero and the Kaz? It is funny that they never talk about a car that had, in 1998 drove from southern California to Las Vegas Nevada on a single charge all the while getting there with a reserve of about 30 miles. The technology has been around for a viable EV for over a decade, the thing that has killed these projects have been lobbyist for the petroleum conglomerates. You don't have to believe me look for yourself. ANYONE who says the tech is not there is either ill informed or has a differing agenda.

  • Science

    Science Fights Back

    By Posted on 1.22.2008 5 Comments

    I had the good fortune to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting this past weekend on behalf of the magazine. One symposium I missed, though, was "Science under Attack", which provided an overview of the current ideologically motivated attacks on both scientific research and science education in the U.S., and provided potential responses from the scientific community. (As I explained to a friend, I figured there was little reason to go to a debate about such matters, as there is really no scientific debate at all.) Looks like I missed a good one. As astronomer Phil Plait explains on his excellent Bad Astronomy weblog, the meeting served as a call to arms to scientists who are tired of having their empirical evidence equivocated with faith-based preconceptions. Specifically, he calls out some in the media who all too often serve as patsies in the fight: To the media, please, dont simply take what people say and repeat it. Dont feel the need to get "balance" in your reporting by talking to "both sides". Sometimes there arent two sides! If someone builds a Holocaust museum, would you interview a white supremacist who says the Holocaust never happened to achieve "balance"? When a new vaccine comes out for a virus, would you interview a homeopath so that "both sides are heard"? Im curious to see whether this meeting, following closely as it does on the heels of the Dover decision (in which a federal court ruled that the Dover school district could not include Intelligent Design in its science curricula) and the ID retreat in Ohio, will mark a watershed moment in the willingness of scientists to stand up for themselves. Might this mark the beginning of 2006: The Year Science Fought Back? —Michael Moyer

    10.16.2008 at 05:17pm - Comment by I.Q.142

    There is a difference between science and theology, one is taught in the church and the other is taught in school. If you want creationism taught in school it should not be put in the science curriculum, instead it should be included in philosophy or theology. One thing I have not heard from creationist is whether or not science should be taught in their churches. I think that they would take offense to that notion. The same way scientist take offense of the notion that creationism is science. Oh yeah and one other little thing that needs to be considered and that is something called the separation between church and state.

  • Science

    Bill Nye vs. Intelligent Design

    By Posted on 2.7.2008 134 Comments

    Bn_globe_1 His show stopped producing new episodes nearly eight years ago, but it seems that Bill Nye the Science Guy (Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!) isn't submitting to B-level TV-celebrity status just yet. A mechanical engineer who studied at Cornell under Carl Sagan, Nye has much more under his belt than his beloved educational show; he engineered a hydraulic device for Boeing that is still used on the 747 and a special sundial used during the Mars Exploration Rover mission.

    Now it seems he's busy touring small-town America, giving sold-out lectures for charity and ruffling a few feathers with criticisms of intelligent design in the process .

    10.16.2008 at 03:17am - Comment by I.Q.142

    It constantly amazes me how the blindly religious always seems to want to make others as ignorant as they are. If any of them actually looked into the history of religious thought they would soon see that the majority of their bible is taken from much earlier philosophies. Even a cursory look will reveal that the tenants of their beliefs come from Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian religions. Christ was not unique, indeed his deeds are recycled from figures as far back as Gilgamesh (which predates the Judean religion by centuries). His image is a copy of Zeus, even their precious ten commandments have been taken almost word for word from the Egyptian book of the dead. So do us all a favor and keep your myths and imaginary friends out of the classroom. If you want them to know about them, that is what your churches are for.



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December 2009: Best of What's New

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