In coastal desert countries like the United Arab Emirates fresh, clean water is a lacking resource. Desalination is a necessary process to receive fresh water, but it often harms the environment by returning concentrated saline back to the ocean. Abu Dhabi's Environment Agency recently announced that they have developed a new solar-powered desalination system that would cut costs and be more eco-friendly.

In desert areas like the Emirates, dust and high temperature often impair the efficiency of solar panels in existing desalination plants. New technologies remedy these problems while reducing the cost of water treatment. In a press release, the agency said that two pilot sites, in Sweihan and Hameem, have shown that the negative environmental impact of desalination can be reduced, along with operating costs. Each plant is capable of producing about 35 kilowatts per hour, having a total capacity of 1050 kilowatt/hour.

Trials of the new solar power system are being tested at 30 different locations within the country. If the new process proves to be successful, Saudi Arabia and other countries will begin to use the system.

Desalination is the most effective way of cleaning water, and several plants already exist in the United Arab Emirates. However, the process can have adverse environmental impact, mainly concentrated saltwater being returned to the sea and killing marine life. New systems like the one developed by the UAE can eliminate or mitigate this problem, resulting in the same amount of clean water but with less damage to the environment.

Source: The Green Optimistic

So far 30,000 US supporters have taken action to stop forced 'virginity testing' in Egypt! Thank you for standing with Egyptian women to protest the abuse. If you haven’t done so yet, send a message to Secretary of State Clinton to demand immediate action: HERE!

After army officers violently cleared Tahrir square of protesters on March 9, 2011, at least 18 women were rounded up in military detention. The protesters told Amnesty International that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

We're demanding that Egyptian officials investigate the allegations and stop this shocking and degrading treatment of women protestors. Call on Secretary Clinton to use her influence to demand immediate action.

Amnesty International has today (23 March 2011 - TA note) called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced 'virginity tests', inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to 'virginity checks' and threatened with prostitution charges.

'Virginity tests' are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

"Forcing women to have 'virginity tests' is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women," said Amnesty International. "All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called 'tests'."

20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.

The women were then subjected to 'virginity tests' in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that 'those not found to be virgins' would be charged with prostitution.

According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.

"Women and girls must be able to express their views on the future of Egypt and protest against the government without being detained, tortured, or subjected to profoundly degrading and discriminatory treatment", said Amnesty International.

"The army officers tried to further humiliate the women by allowing men to watch and photograph what was happening, with the implicit threat that the women could be at further risk of harm if the photographs were made public."

Journalist Rasha Azeb was also detained in Tahrir Square and told Amnesty International that she was handcuffed, beaten and insulted.

Following their arrest, the 18 women were initially taken to a Cairo Museum annex where they were reportedly handcuffed, beaten with sticks and hoses, given electric shocks in the chest and legs, and called 'prostitutes'.

Rasha Azeb could see and hear the other detained women being tortured by being given electric shocks throughout their detention at the museum. She was released several hours later with four other men who were also journalists, but 17 other women were transferred to the military prison in Heikstep.

Testimonies of other women detained at the same time collected by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence are consistent with Rasha Azeb and Salwa Hosseini's accounts of beatings, electrocution and 'virginity tests'.

"The Egyptian authorities must halt the shocking and degrading treatment of women protesters. Women fully participated in bringing change in Egypt and should not be punished for their activism", said Amnesty International.

"All security and army forces must be clearly instructed that torture and other ill-treatment, including forced 'virginity tests', will no longer be tolerated, and will be fully investigated. Those found responsible for such acts must be brought to justice and the courageous women who denounced such abuses be protected from reprisals."

All 17 women detained in the military prison were brought before a military court on 11 March and released on 13 March. Several received one-year suspended prison sentences.

Salwa Hosseini was convicted of disorderly conduct, destroying private and public property, obstructing traffic and carrying weapons.

Amnesty International opposes the trial of civilians before military courts in Egypt, which have a track record of unfair trials and where the right to appeal is severely restricted.

Source: amnestyusa.org

So far 30,000 US supporters have taken action to stop forced 'virginity testing' in Egypt! Thank you for standing with Egyptian women to protest the abuse. If you haven’t done so yet, send a message to Secretary of State Clinton to demand immediate action: HERE!

... CONTINUES.

Author: Steve Ragan - Source: thetechherald.com

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Author: Steve Ragan - Source: thetechherald.com

NOT RECEIVING THE PIN CODE (Google Adsense )

The problem is that i am not receving the pincode at my home address , even i have send the scan Telephone bill of my home which clearly shows the home address.Please help and guid me in proper way. thanks --- comment by: Faisal grapix

I don't understand why they don't just sent the PIN by email like every OTHER company sends it's validation info. They could even validate by phone.. and then shoot and email back and forth to the account holder while you are on the phone as a "double check." There is no reason to use the postal service for this step at all. It is like they are making it difficult on purpose for people. It would make sense as every dollar they retain for as long as possible makes them more money in interest. It adds up. They obviously set up the system this way for a reason. --- comment by: SCopening

I not only requested a new PIN many times.... I send in my UTILITY BILL over 5 times. I also flew to California and talked to some Google people at a trade show and told them my issue. They got on their internal email and send in a request for me. THEN I FINALLY got an email saying my account was OK.

Of course... I'm not holding my breath on whether that means they will ever mail me the money they owe me. It took NINE months just to get this far. And... since the PIN they were supposed to mail never showed up... I'm not thinking it looks too good for a check.

Of course... they took MY money every month on the AdWords side.

The strange thing is. My account was making money... which meant THEY were making money. Also... my ads were placed within a business networking organizations web site... a market of mostly business OWNERS... which you would think would be a highly desirable target demographic.

Of course I pulled all their ads off my site when I never got paid, and replaced them with ads from other ad sharing services... who paid me RIGHT AWAY. --- comment by SueCopening

Source: google.com/support/forum/

Hi,

We're happy to let you know that we've manually overridden your PIN
requirement. Your account information is now confirmed and you won't be
required to enter another PIN for this account in the future.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

--- ... ---

Thank you.
I tried to choose the Form of Payment from the menu for Western Union but
recieved this messagge: We've noticed that the state code listed in your
billing address does not match any of the official Mexican state codes
accepted by Western Union.
The problem is that the country is Romania and on the Payee Information page
it is clearly stated that the Postal Code is 700xxx for Iasi in Romania in
Europe.
Any advice?

Cordiali Saluti, / Best Regards,
xxxx xxxxxx - client Google AdSense

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Hi,

Thanks for emailing about this. That was a bug in our system that was
resolved recently. Would you mind trying again? If the problem persists,
please let me know so I can pass that information along to the people
working to fix it.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

...---...

Sorry, but I tried to choose again the Form of Payment from the menu for
Western Union but
recieved this same messagge:
We've noticed that the state code listed in your
billing address does not match any of the official Mexican state codes
accepted by Western Union.
In the Payee Information page
it is clearly stated that the
Postal Code is in Romania in
Europe.
Waiting to fix the bug.
xxxx xxxxxx - client Google AdSense

Source: binaryturf.com

One of my friends just received their Adsense PIN. He came straight to me and I walked him through the entire process. During this I had my camera around and made some pictures. I noted some distinct features of the mail; it’s difficult for me to remember how it looked at the time I received mine but here it is for you to see.

The friend had been sent two PINs earlier which never reached him (which is understandable in the age of IM communication and Skype). The pics are not to good, we were on shaky grounds too eager to open it up and validate the account.

Front

Here is how it looks as seen from the front. The text “Important Account Information Enclosed” may confuse and illude the postman into believing as if this thing carries something of high value. But the catch is it’s not even a paper-weight if it reaches the wrong person.

Rear

Here’s the other side. Note the cellophane tape at the sides; I had to tilt and twist the camera to catch the reflection and highlight it. This tape secures it on the three sides. Read further to know why. The top side is just a fold.

Side

This is intelligent. You can’t actually call it an envelope, it’s more of a folded postcard. Just in case the words on the front got anyone excited and eager to keep the thing, they can peep in and take a look – nada – only some text there.

Inside

Once you are done shooting, cut through the tape and flip open the card. This is how it looks inside.

Next Steps – Entering the Adsense PIN

You must now login to your adsense account. You’ll see the following screen (relevant areas are highlighted).

Click on the "More Details" link

Your payments will be on hold and that the reason you’ve been sent this PIN – to enter it into your Adsense account and validate it. The “payments on hold” notice is accompanied by the “More Details” link. Click it to proceed.

Now you see the "Please enter your PIN"

This links takes you to the next screen (obviously; am I spoon feeding?)

Enter your PIN exactly as in the postcard

You finally get the box where you are supposed to enter the PIN. Do it and press “Submit PIN”. You’ll be led to a screen saying “Thankyou”.

Last screen - Finished - phew!

Researchers are developing a new class of "plasmonic metamaterials" as potential building blocks for advanced optical technologies, including ultrapowerful microscopes and computers, improved solar cells, and a possible invisibility cloak.

The new materials could make possible "nanophotonic" devices for numerous applications, said Alexandra Boltasseva, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University.

Unlike natural materials, metamaterials may possess an index of refraction less than one or less than zero. Refraction occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another. It causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears crooked when viewed from the outside.

Being able to create materials with an index of refraction that's negative or between one and zero promises a range of potential breakthroughs in a new field called transformation optics. However, development of new technologies using metamaterials has been hindered by two major limitations: too much light is "lost," or absorbed by metals such as silver and gold contained in the metamaterials, and the materials need to be more precisely tuned so that they possess the proper index of refraction.

Now, researchers are proposing a new approach to overcome these obstacles. Findings will be detailed in the journal Science. The article was written by Boltasseva and Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor and a professor of applied physics and materials science at the California Institute of Technology.

The researchers are working to replace silver and gold in materials that are created using two options: making semiconductors more metallic by adding metal impurities to them; or adding non-metallic elements to metals, in effect making them less metallic. Examples of these materials include aluminum oxides and titanium nitride, which looks like gold and is used to coat the domes of Russian churches.

Researchers have tested some of the new materials, demonstrating their optical properties and finding that they outperform silver and gold, in work based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue's Discovery Park.

Plasmonic metamaterials are promising for various advances, including a possible "hyperlens" that could make optical microscopes 10 times more powerful and able to see objects as small as DNA; advanced sensors; new types of light-harvesting systems for more efficient solar cells; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; and a cloak of invisibility.

Optical nanophotonic circuits might harness clouds of electrons called "surface plasmons" to manipulate and control the routing of light in devices too tiny for conventional lasers.

Some of the new materials are showing promise in uses involving near-infrared light, the range of the spectrum critical for telecommunications and fiberoptics. Other materials also might work for light in the visible range of the spectrum. The new materials might be tuned so that their refractive index is ideal for specific ranges of the spectrum, allowing their use for particular applications.

Future photonics technologies will revolve around new types of optical transistors, switches and data processors. Conventional computers transmit and process pieces of information in serial form, or one piece at a time. However, future computers may use parallel streams of data, resulting in much faster networks and computers.

Source: Purdue University

If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources – nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today – why wouldn't you do it?

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters – no more natural gas or coal – and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure – for all purposes – with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society – including medical costs – of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide "base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.

Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said. "If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said. "Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said. "The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said. "It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said. "We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

Source: EurekAlert

MSNBC host Cenk Uygur explains how the National Cancer Institute has recognized several possible medical benefits from marijuana use. This could lead to having marijuana reclassified from a Schedule 1 drug down to a Schedule III drug in which case the government could not crack down on medical marijuana shops.

US National Cancer Institute: "THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF MEDICINAL CANNABIS FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH CANCER INCLUDE ANTIEMETIC EFFECTS, APPETITE STIMULATION, PAIN RELIEF AND IMPROVED SLEEP.

IN THE PRACTICE OF INTEGRATIVE ONCOLOGY, THE HEALTH CARE PROVIDER MAY RECOMMEND MEDICINAL CANNABIS NOT ONLY FOR SYMPTOM MANAGEMENT BUT ALSO FOR ITS POSSIBLE DIRECT ANTITUMOR EFFECT."

Scientists can now manufacture a synthetic version of the self-healing y substance that mussels use to anchor themselves to rocks in pounding ocean surf and surging tidal basins. A patent is pending on the substance, whose potential applications include use as an adhesive or coating for underwater machinery or in biomedical settings as a surgical adhesive or bonding agent for implants.

Inspiring the invention were the hair-thin holdfast fibers that mussels secrete to stick against rocks in lakes, rivers and oceans. "Everything amazingly just self-assembles underwater in a matter of minutes, which is a process that's still not understood that well," said Niels Holten-Andersen, a postdoctoral scholar with chemistry professor Ka Yee Lee at the University of Chicago.

Holten-Andersen, Lee and an international team of colleagues are publishing the details of their invention this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. Holten-Andersen views the evolution of life on Earth as "this beautiful, amazingly huge experiment" in which natural selection has enabled organisms to evolve an optimal use of materials over many millions of years.

"The mussels that live right on the coast where the waves really come crashing in have had to adapt to that environment and build their materials accordingly," he said.

Many existing synthetic coatings involve a compromise between strength and brittleness. Those coatings rely on permanent covalent bonds, a common type of chemical bond that is held together by two atoms that share two or more electrons. The bonds of the mussel-inspired material, however, are linked via metals and exhibit both strength and reversibility.

"These metal bonds are stable, yet if they break, they automatically self-heal without adding any extra energy to the system," Holten-Andersen said.

A key ingredient of the material is a polymer, which consists of long chains of molecules, synthesized by co-author Phillip Messersmith of Northwestern University. When mixed with metal salts at low pH, the polymer appears as a green solution. But the solution immediately transforms into a gel when mixed with sodium hydroxide to change the pH from high acidity to high alkalinity.

"Instead of it being this green solution, it turned into this red, self-healing sticky gel that you can play with, kind of like Silly Putty," he said. Holten-Andersen and his colleagues found that the gel could repair tears within minutes.

"You can change the property of the system by dialing in a pH," said Ka Yee Lee, a professor in chemistry at UChicago and co-author of the PNAS paper. The type of metal ion (an electrically charged atom of, for example. iron, titanium or aluminum) added to the mix provides yet another knob for tuning the material's properties, even at the same pH.

The sticky material that mussels have evolved has inspired an international team of scientists to design a new artificial, self-healing gel that lends itself to underwater applications. The mussels pictured here are attached to a rock on Onetangi Beach of Waiheke Island, New Zealand. Credit: Steve Koppes

"You can tune the stiffness, the strength of the material, by now having two knobs. The question is, what other knobs are out there?" Lee said.
This week's PNAS study reports the most recent in a series of advances related to sticky mussel fibers that various research collaborations have posted in recent years. A 2006 PNAS paper by Haeshin Lee, now of the Korea Advanced Institute of Technology, Northwestern's Phillip Messersmith and UChicago's Norbert Scherer demonstrated an elusive but previously suspected fact. Using atomic-force microscopy, they established that an unusual amino acid called "dopa" was indeed the key ingredient in the adhesive protein mussels use to adhere to rocky surfaces.

Last year in the journal Science, scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute documented still more details about mussel-fiber chemical bonds. The Max Planck collaboration included Holten-Andersen and Herbert Waite of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Holten-
Andersen began researching the hardness and composition of mussel coatings as a graduate student in Waite's laboratory.

"Our aspiration is to learn some new design principles from nature that we haven't yet actually been using in man-made materials that we can then apply to make man-made materials even better," he said.

Being able to manufacture green materials is another advantage of drawing inspiration from nature. "A lot of our traditional materials are hard to get rid of once we're done with them, whereas nature's materials are obviously made in a way that's environmentally friendly," Holten-Andersen said.

Source: Physorg

An engine development company called the Scuderi Group recently announced progress in its effort to build an engine that can reduce fuel consumption by 25 to 36 percent compared to a conventional design. Such an improvement would be roughly equal to a 50 percent increase in fuel economy.

Sal Scuderi, says that nine major automotive companies have signed nondisclosure agreements that allow them access to detailed data about the engine. Scuderi says he is hopeful that at least one of the automakers will sign a licensing deal before the year is over. Historically, major automakers have been reluctant to license engine technology because they prefer to develop the engines themselves as the core technology of their products. But as pressure mounts to meet new fuel-economy regulations, automakers have become more interested in looking at outside technology.

Although Scuderi has built a prototype engine to demonstrate the basic design, the fuel savings figures are based not on the performance of the prototype but on computer simulations that compare the Scuderi engine to the conventional engine in a 2004 Chevrolet Cavalier, a vehicle for which extensive simulation data is publicly available, Scuderi says. Since 2004, automakers have introduced significant improvements to engines, but these generally improve fuel economy in the range of something like 20 percent, compared to the approximately 50 percent improvement the Scuderi simulations show.

There's a big difference, however, between simulation results and data from engines in actual vehicles, says Larry Rinek, a senior consultant with Frost and Sullivan, an analyst firm. "So far things are looking encouraging—but will they really meet the lofty claims?" he says. Automakers should wait to see data from an actual engine installed in a vehicle before they license the technology, he says.

A conventional engine uses a four stroke cycle: air is pulled into the chamber, the air is compressed, fuel is added and a spark ignites the mixture, and finally the combustion gases are forced out of the cylinder. In the Scuderi engine, known as a split-cycle engine, these functions are divided between two adjacent cylinders. One cylinder draws in air and compresses it. The compressed air moves through a tube into a second cylinder, where fuel is added and combustion occurs.

Splitting these functions gives engineers flexibility in how they design and control the engine. In the case of the Scuderi engine, there are two main changes from what happens in a conventional internal-combustion engine. The first is a change to when combustion occurs as the piston moves up and down in the cylinder. The second is the addition of a compressed-air storage tank.

Source: TechnologyReview