"US researchers have developed an efficient way of producing hydrogen from urine - a feat that could not only fuel the cars of the future, but could also help clean up municipal wastewater...Gerardine Botte of Ohio University may now have found the answer, using an electrolytic approach to produce hydrogen from urine - the most abundant waste on Earth - at a fraction of the cost of producing hydrogen from water."
- imabonehead
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"Urine's major constituent is urea, which incorporates four hydrogen atoms per molecule - importantly, less tightly bonded than the hydrogen atoms in water molecules. Botte used electrolysis to break the molecule apart, developing an inexpensive new nickel-based electrode to selectively and efficiently oxidise the urea. To break the molecule down, a voltage of 0.37V needs to be applied across the cell - much less than the 1.23V needed to split water."
- imabonehead
The space station filters urine to recover drinking water. So far as I know, it does not split the urea to get hydrogen. They would expend considerable electricity to do so, when they don't really need to.
- DGentry
"Dr. Charles Perry, a former electrical engineer at IBM, believes his hybrid retrofit kit can transform nearly any vehicle into a fuel-saver at a cost of between $3,000 and $5,000. The idea is at least sound enough to have taken the top prize at the green energy competition from the Tennessee Technology Development Corp., which came with a $50,000 grant along with a matching investment and a hopeful deal to put the invention into commercial production within three years from Palmer Labs LLC."
- imabonehead
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"With California a day away from issuing IOUs instead of paying its bills, Gov. Schwarzenegger and the legislature remain at odds over how to close a now $26.3 billion deficit. Schwarzenegger on Thursday ordered a third unpaid furlough day for 235,000 state employees. With its $1.7 trillion economy sputtering and 11.5% unemployment surging, California's difficulty in balancing its budget could affect the national recovery. But the Golden State's budget problems are hardly new. The seeds of them were planted more than 30 years ago."
- imabonehead
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"For both, the company and the developers who have been following the traditional methods of development like waterfall, moving to scrum is a big deal and not many follow it the right way. Here I share the experiences that how things used to happen and what mistakes were done in the way and what could have been done better."
- imabonehead
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"CHIANG MAI, Thailand – Thousands of excited visitors flocked Saturday to a zoo in northern Thailand for the first public viewing of a baby panda, which has been featured on Thai front pages almost every day since her birth six weeks ago."
- imabonehead
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"Sony Ericsson's first Android smartphone will be a very high-end touchscreen device most likely taking the iPhone head on, a Danish scoop shows. Codenamed the "Rachel," the phone would fit into the XPERIA line occupied only by the X1 but would emphasize speed, according to Mobil. Like the Windows Mobile-based Toshiba TG01, it would have a very high-end 1GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon processor at its heart; it may also compete against the iPhone 3GS through "great" 3D graphics capabilities."
- imabonehead
via Bookmarklet
Wow, I really like the look of that phone. Simple, minimalist styling. Can't tell how thick it is, though.
- Jason Huebel
This may well be the first Sony Ericsson phone I've ever actually wanted.
- Martin Bryant
"A team of cryptologists at Luxembourg university have made substantial theoretical progress with attacks on the AES-192 and AES-256 encryption standards. In their paper, scientists Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich describe how to crack an AES-256 key with a time complexity of 2^123 and an AES-192 key with a time complexity of 2^176 under certain circumstances. Due to some special characteristics, however, the attacks have no practical relevance for the security of AES-encrypted data."
- imabonehead
via Bookmarklet
such a Luxembourgian names these guys have... :)
- A.T.
"Enter a new technology called Ksplice. The Ksplice service called Uptrack will update the Linux kernel in your system while it is running without disrupting your operations or requiring a reboot."
- imabonehead
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"If I had to make a list of my top favorite comfort foods of all time, mapo doufu would be at the top along with lamb curry, roast chicken, and anything in a clay pot. I almost always order it at Sichuan restaurants, despite that voice in my head pushing me to try something new. But the craving is too hard to resist. Thinking about the mala taste, the thick sauce that wraps sublimely around white rice, and the silken-ness of the tofu contrasting with the slightly crispy pork all make me surrender to the tried-and-true."
- imabonehead
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"I have the hardest time not ordering scallion pancakes when I go out for Chinese food. They make great appetizers when the entrees happen to take longer than five minutes. They absorb the sauce of your moo shu pork like a sponge. And your vegetarian friends can eat them with abandon. That said, few scallion pancakes beat the homemade version, when they come off the skillet hot and golden brown."
- imabonehead
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"According to RegisterHardware, Managing Director of Archos Northern Europe - Tony Limrick - has officially confirmed that an Archos Internet Media Tablet Based On Android will launch this September."
- imabonehead
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"We've been hearing Chinese officials say for quite some time now that there are far too many automakers in the country for a healthy market in the long-term, but we didn't realize until today just how out-of-hand it may be. According to state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua, China has seen an unprecedented 89 new automobile launches so far this year."
- imabonehead
via Bookmarklet
"Assuming everything goes to plan, the car – supposedly capable of hitting sixty mph in around six seconds and managing 100 miles per gallon – will be entered in the Auto X Prize competition."
- imabonehead
"Porsche plans to expand its Panamera line-up to include three new powerplants – a Volkswagen-sourced V6, a diesel and some manner of hybrid – but in addition to offering new engines, the automaker may offer a harder, more performance-oriented model to slot in above the Turbo. Similar to the strategy Porsche employed with the Cayenne, this new model – which could be dubbed the Turbo S or GTS – would nix the Turbo model's standard air suspension and instead fit a set of performance-tuned springs and shocks to maximize grip and on-track prowess."
- imabonehead
via Bookmarklet
That car is just impossible to make look good from any angle. Just when I thought Porsche couldn't do any worse than the 1st gen Cayenne, they do #facepalm#designdisaster
- LANjackal
"Advanced Micro Devices and its ATI graphics business unit will not support Nvidia Corp.'s CUDA general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) environment. AMD/ATI believes that since CUDA (which was originally an abbreviate for compute unified device architecture) was developed by Nvidia, the latter will get unreasonable performance benefits in CUDA-powered applications, whereas performance of ATI graphics chips may be handicapped."
- imabonehead
via Bookmarklet
Intel's Larrabee (sp) might come from behind and swamp them both anyway. Nvidia's in a tough spot with AMD's announcement, because their current feud with Apple may see them being dropped from the latter's machine, thus sinking the OpenCL boat too.
- LANjackal
"The U.S. Department of Transportation and National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) are hard at work developing new ways to make the air conditioners more efficient and reduce the interior tempteratures in our cars and trucks. What's the big deal? Apparently, a whopping seven billion gallons of gasoline are used each and every year in the United States alone to run automotive AC units, which represents 5.5-percent of the country's fuel use. Burning that fuel emits more than 58 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
- imabonehead
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