PV installation at Applied Materials, Inc., Austin Texas, 2008. Image by Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons.
Larry D. Moore gallery on WikiMedia Commons (including many images not related to energy).
Apart from its beauty – we suspect there’s more to this PV panel design than an attractive layout. An image of the array, comprised of a larger number of similarly or identically constructed setups, can be found after the jump.
Architecting a Clean, Secure, Sustainable, Non-Carbon and Non-Nuclear Energy Future
Middelgrunden, Denmark, near Copenhagen
Marketplace reported last night that “Massachusetts has launched a program that 
lets home and business owners who generate their own power sell it back to the electric compan” at retail prices, increasing the incentives for the installation of solar and wind energy-producing equipment, and additional incentives for conservation (i.e. additional conservation, which brings net consumption towards zero brings a household closer not just to a zero bill, but payment from utility companies).
Program pays top dollar for extra power, reported by Mitchell Hartman. From the transcript:
[Massachusetts] State Energy Secretary Ian Bowles.
IAN BOWLES: Starting now, if you own solar panels on your home, or you have a small-scale wind turbine, and you want to sell extra power back to the grid, you’ll now be able to do that at a very advantageous rate.
California will do the same thing starting in January and lots of other states are working on similar programs. Massachusetts now leads the pack, because it’s making utilities pay retail rates for the electricity customers generate.
TERRY TAMMINEN: So it really encourages you to become a renewable energy entrepreneur.
California energy consultant Terry Tamminen says these policies encourage alternatives to fossil fuels. But can a bunch of windmills and rooftop solar panels really make a difference?
TAMMINEN: Boston may not be noted for its sunshine, but neither is Germany, and yet Germany is the second-largest user and producer of solar energy in the world.
For years, Germany has been paying customers a premium for the renewable power they generate. Tamminen says that’s largely why it’s jumped ahead.
Mitchell Hartman, Program pays top dollar for extra power.
Via Marketplace, a production of American Public Media.
Brain Trauma Foundation logo
The Brain Trauma Foundation, and its BTF Learning Portal, which provides continuing education for medical professionals, are an excellent resource for anyone concerned with preventing and treating head injuries.The BTF Learning Portal’s courses are CME-accredited in most, if not all, states. To their credit, BTF courses seem to be priced so as to permit them to continue their work rather than, as is sometimes the case, a revenue stream which can lead a non profit off-course, we we’ve seen in other cases.The BTF research led to treatment guidelines for TBI. According to the CDC, the CDC analysis
found that that if the BTF guidelines were used more routinely, there would be a 50% decrease in deaths, improved quality of life and a savings of $288 million a year in medical and rehabilitation costs.
According to the study, “Using a Cost-Benefit Analysis to Estimate Outcomes of a Clinical Treatment Guideline: Testing the Brain Trauma Foundation Guidelines for the Treatment of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury,” just published in the December issue of the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, when the BTF guidelines are followed, the proportion of patients with good outcomes increased substantially from 35% to 66%, and the proportion of patients with poor outcomes decreased from 34% to 19%.
Link to BTF press release. (We’ll update this shortly with a direct link to the CDC statement).
US Flag, Constitution, Eagle Statue of Liberty
Human Rights at Home and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Roughly a year ago, the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy (ACS) published Catherine Powell’sHuman Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the New Administration. In this plan for reaffirming and implementing the US commitment to human rights, many recommendations were made, including a call for “the ratification, accompanied by fully adequate implementing legislation, of important human rights treaties to which the United States is not yet a party.” Continue reading