Sunday, January 31, 2010

Donghai bridge, worlds longest bridge, China

Donghai bridge, worlds longest bridge, China
China, it seems, can't build fast enough or big enough these days, be it new airport terminals, dams, buildings for the Olympics, coal fired power plants, or bridges. In fact, last week China opened the world's longest sea bridge, spanning 22-miles across Hangzhou Bay, linking Shanghai and Ningbo, an industrial city. The previous record holder was the 20.2-mile long Donghai bridge, which links Shanghai and a port by the name of Yangshan. So what will the bridge accomplish? The vice-president of an electric company based in Ningbo said it best: "I think it will be easier for our company to recruit high-calibre employees, who always prefer working in small cities like Cixi but living in big cities like Shanghai. They can leave Shanghai for Cixi in the morning and go back in the afternoon. It's only 1.5 hours' drive." Aside from the living in big cities part, that sounds a lot like America. Granted, the bridge will reduce the driving distance between the two cities by 75 miles, but it will clearly enable increased sprawl, congestion and car-ownership. But hey, given development patterns in the U.S. over the last 50 years, who are we to judge? Amazingly, the gargantuan project was completed in under five years, and is supposedly designed to last 100 years. One wonders whether a different sort of infrastructure project--such as a high-speed rail line--would have been a better long-term investment for the country. Then again, in China, as in most countries around the world, the near-term is nearly all that matters. It's just that in China the scale of everything--the mistakes and the successes--are orders of magnitude greater than they are anywhere else in the world.

Can I move my blogger posts from one to another blog all at once?

Can I move my blogger posts from one to another blog all at once?
Yes, It can be done. I needed to do this myself today and stumbled on both your question and the solution. Here's how:


1. Go to draft.blogger.com. It's a new blog editor the Blogger folks are preparing. Not many people know about it yet, but now you're one of them. (see the url I provided below for details about it.)

2. Go to the dashboard and select the settings link for the blog you want to export from.

3. Select export to save an "xml" file with all your post info.

4. Go back to the dashboard and select the blog you want to import to.

5. Select the settings link for that blog.

6. Import the blog.

7. If you choose to automatically publish everything, you should be all set. If you don't select to publish everything you can edit the list of posts at the new blog and publish what you want.

You can choose to use the "draft" editor as your default editor, which is what I did, or you can just use it for the import/export and go back to the normal blogger.com site as before.
I have used the import and export feature and it works.

Source(s):

go to bloggerindraft dot blogspot dot com for details. (for "security reasons" the form here won't let me put a web address...

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Haiti: The U.S. Created the Earthquake in Haiti?

Haiti: The U.S. Created the Earthquake in Haiti?, HAARP Project, HAARP Weapon
The Northern Fleet has been monitoring the movements and activities of U.S. Marines in the Caribbean since 2008 when the Americans announced their intention to reestablish the Fourth Fleet, which was disbanded in 1950, and that Russia responded a year later, with the Fleet led by the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great "by starting its first exercises in this region since the end of the Cold War.”

Since the end of the decade of the 70's in the last century, the U.S. "advanced a lot" in the state of its earthquake weapons and, according to these reports, they now use equipment with Pulse, Plasma and Tesla Electromagnetic and Sonic technology together with "shock wave bombs."

The report also compares the experiences of these two earthquake weapons of the U.S. Navy last week, when the test in the Pacific caused an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 to strike in the area around the town of Eureka, Calif., causing no casualties. But the test in the Caribbean caused the death of at least 140 thousand innocent people.

According to the report, it is "more than likely" that the U.S. Navy had "full knowledge" of the catastrophic damage that this test earthquake could potentially have on Haiti and had pre-positioned its Deputy Commander of the Southern Command, General PK Keen, on the island to oversee aid work if needed.

As regards the final result of the tests of these weapons, the report warns that there is a U.S. plan to destroy Iran through a series of earthquakes designed to overthrow its current Islamic regime. Additionally, according to the report, the system being tested by the USA (HAARP Project) would also create anomalies in the climate causing floods, droughts and hurricanes.

According to another report, coincidentally, facts exist establishing that the earthquake in Sichuan, China on 12 May 2008, a magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale, was also caused by HAARP radio frequencies. It can be observed that there is a correlation between seismic activity and the ionosphere, through the control of Radio Frequencies Induced by force fields, which is a HAARP feature, and it can be concluded that:

Smaller And More Efficient Nuclear Battery Created

Smaller And More Efficient Nuclear Battery Created
Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

“To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density,” said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “The radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries.”


Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, currently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). Although nuclear batteries can pose concerns, Kwon said they are safe.

“People hear the word ‘nuclear’ and think of something very dangerous,” he said. “However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems.”

His innovation is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor. Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor.

“The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”

Kwon has been collaborating with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, and is working to build and test the battery at the facility. In the future, they hope to increase the battery’s power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that the battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair. They’ve also applied for a provisional patent.

Kwon’s research has been published in the Journal of Applied Physics Letters and Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry.

Plug Your iPod Into Your T-Shirt for Power?

Plug Your iPod Into Your T-Shirt for Power?
Could powering an iPod or cell phone become as easy as plugging it into your tee shirt or jeans, and then recharging the clothing overnight? Scientists in California are reporting an advance in that direction with an easier way of changing ordinary cotton and polyester into "conductive energy textiles" -- e-Textiles that double as a rechargeable battery. Their report on the research appears in ACS' Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

"Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials with an array of novel functionalities, such as flexibility, stretchability, and lightweight, which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technology," Yi Cui and colleagues note. "High-performance sportswear, wearable displays, new classes of portable power, and embedded health monitoring systems are examples of these novel applications."


The report describes a new process for making E-textiles that uses "ink" made from single-walled carbon nanotubes -- electrically conductive carbon fibers barely 1/50,000 the width of a human hair. When applied to cotton and polyester fabrics, the ink produced e-Textiles with an excellent ability to store electricity. The fabrics retained flexibility and stretchability of regular cotton and polyester, and kept their new e-properties under conditions that simulated repeated laundering.

New iPhone App to Measure Carbon Intensity of UK Electricity Grid

New iPhone App to Measure Carbon Intensity of UK Electricity Grid
As temperatures drop below freezing and demand for energy soars, engineers at the University of Southampton have launched a new iPhone application to monitor the UK electricity grid.

Dr Alex Rogers, Dr. Perukrishnen Vytelingum and Professor Nick Jennings, at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have developed an application, named 'GridCarbon', which when downloaded to an iPhone, enables users to monitor the carbon intensity of the grid -- the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when one unit (1 kWh) of electricity is used by a consumer.


"The app shows people how using appliances and machinery at different times of the day can reduce their carbon footprint; for example, at some times of the year, running washing machines and dishwashers overnight rather than at peak times in the evening, can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent," said Dr Rogers. "While developing this app, we were surprised at how much the carbon intensity of the grid varies at different times of the day, and between different days in the week."

The application, which can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store by searching for 'GridCarbon', is just one initiative being developed by ECS academics as they develop a vision of the Smart Grid.

They are currently researching the use of computerised agents to operate smart electricity meters in support of the Government's initiative to have smart meters in all homes by 2020, and are using a new building on the Southampton campus as a test bed.

"We are developing agents that can 'learn' how much energy a building or home uses and which can then make predictions and decisions about cost-effective energy use," Professor Jennings added. "We have already proved that agents can be used to haggle and resolve conflict, trade on the stock market and cope with disasters; our next challenge is to incorporate them into smart electricity meters."

Combined Approach May Be Better Way to Treat Autism

Combined Approach May Be Better Way to Treat Autism
Children with autism would likely receive better treatment if supporters of the two major teaching methods stopped bickering over theory and focused on a combined approach, a Michigan State University psychologist argues in a new paper.

For years, the behavioral and developmental camps have argued over which theory is more effective in teaching communication and other skills to preschool-aged children with autism. Basically, behaviorists believe learning occurs through reinforcement or reward while developmental advocates stress learning through important interactions with caregivers.


But while the theories differ, the actual methods the two camps ultimately use to teach children can be strikingly similar, especially when the treatment is naturalistic, or unstructured, said Brooke Ingersoll, MSU assistant professor of psychology.

In the January issue of the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, Ingersoll contends that advocates of the behavioral and developmental approaches should set aside their differences and use the best practices from each to meet the needs of the student and the strengths of the parent or teacher.

"We need to stop getting so hung up on whether the behavioral approach is better than the developmental approach and vice versa," Ingersoll said. "What we really need to start looking at is what are the actual intervention techniques being used and how are these effective."

An estimated one out of every 110 children in the United States has autism and the number of diagnosed cases is growing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms typically surface by a child's second birthday and the disorder is four to five times more likely to occur in boys than in girls.

Ingersoll said the behavioral and developmental treatment methods both can be effective on their own. But historically, advocates for each have rarely collaborated on treatment development for children with autism, meaning it's unknown whether a combined approach is more effective.

Ingersoll expects it is. She is trained in both methods and has created a combined curriculum on social communication that she's teaching to preschool instructors in Michigan's Ottawa, Livingston and Clinton counties. Through the MSU-funded project, the instructors then teach the method to parents of autistic children.

Ingersoll said the combined method works, but it will probably take a few years of research to determine if it's more effective than a singular approach.

"I'm not necessarily advocating for a new philosophical approach -- the reality is that neither side is likely to change their philosophy," Ingersoll said. "What I am advocating is more of a pragmatic approach that involves combining the interventions in different ways to meet the needs of the child or the caregiver. I think that will build better interventions."