Author Archives: Jonathan Soroko

About Jonathan Soroko

Revived from the dead, 18-July-2013

Freeware Genius: as advertised, brilliant resource for locating and selecting freeware

FWG_logo3 Via LifeHacker, have discovered Freeware Genius

which is another must-have resource.

Their review of MindRaider persuaded me that MindRaider might well be worth what looked to be an initial time-energy investment. Some other recent pieces which might be helpful:

The best free antivirus: a comparison

Ten lesser known “must have” free Programs, part 1 (I’d only heard of two or three – and the rest look very interesting)

Photology: automagically finds images in huge image libraries

Freeware Genius. Bookmark this one forthwith.

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NPR's Talk of the Nation: Could $20-Per-Gallon Gasoline Make Us Happier?

From NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Thursday, 16 July.

Could $20-Per-Gallon Gasoline Make Us Happier?

When it’s time to fill up the gas tank, many fear the price of gas will return to the $4-a-gallon days of last summer. But according to author Chris Steiner, our lives would be a lot happier and healthier if gas prices rose into the double digits. Steiner explains himself, and the title of his book: $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better.

OldPhones.com – source for phone-line powered phones

Anyone who’s done any household emergency planning has come across the advice to keep in the house at least one telephone which doesn’t have extra features which require additional current, usually (perhaps always) through a black or gray AC to DC adapter – one of the cubes or boxes that have forced us all to buy power strips. Trouble is, they’re hard to find – and those that are currently

NOAA: El Nino Southern Oscillation

Via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, El Niño returns in July 2009

NOAA announced on July 9, 2009 that the climate phenomenon called El Niño has returned. The El Niño Southern Oscillation is characterized by low ocean surface winds along the Equatorial Pacific, generating warmer than average ocean temperatures. These warmer temperatures are visible in sea surface temperature anomaly data, such as is shown in this animation.

See link for animation.  El Niño returns in July 2009

Silicon Solar’s Portable Solar Power Systems

Silicon Solar has a wider selection of Portable Solar Power Systems than we’d recalled, including some, like the flexible (in fact, rollable) panels pictured below, which are presumably fairly robust. We’re not sure which models/systems can be daisy-chained – one of the principal virtues of the Solar Stik system. We hope to be able to manage, in the near future, a comparison either of the respective specifications – or perhaps even a field test.

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

The Global P3  – at right – at full capture/output generates 30 watts of energy, sells for a bit over $500 – and weighs, according to Silicon Solar – one pound. For those of you on the Standard Metric system – that slightly less than one kilogram.

We hope that government purchases and other economies of scale push prices down further. However, without having data at hand, we think it safe to say that the weight to yield ratios of solar PV systems has been improving.

Alternative Energy Info: Nanosolar's thin-film cells

Alternative Energy Info reports that the thin-film cells, originally announced in 2008, appear to be in production, and that the Nanosolar has been adding employees. From Alternative Energy Info, based on reporting by Earth2Tech:

Earth2Tech has noted that there hasn’t been much news from the thin film company Nanosolar lately.    I haven’t seen much from them either – they’re one of the companies I try to keep a close watch on.   So Reuters decided to check it out and try to find out what was happening in the Nanosolar world.   What they found is that there is some activity going on behind the scenes – Nanosolar has been hiring, and there’s a number of new job and internships opening with the company.   Nanosolar’s CEO, Martin Roscheisen told Reuters that the company is “purposely keeping quiet and plans to start talking again in September.”    But based on the job openings, it looks like Nanosolar has been busy ramping up production.  Nanosolar said last year they had developed a new tool that would allow them to crank out up to 1 gigawatt of their thin film CIGS  solar cells each year, but since Nanosolar didn’t say how many cells they were actually making, it’s always been hard to tell what they’ve actually been doing.  Perhaps September will see some hard numbers.

Nanosolar: No news is good news at Alternative Energy Info .

Via Blogopolis Blueprint .

A Self-Powered Sentinel | Creative Synthesis Blog | Shae Davidson

of the Creative Synthesis Collaborative posted this on June 2nd:

Massachusetts-based Voltree Power is currently developing a network of sensor nodes that will monitor forest conditions and immediately alert users to wildfires. The system, the Early Wildfire Alert Network (EWAN), resembles other efforts to create decentralized monitoring networks. The network tracks humidity, air temperature, and other factors, sending the data via wireless transceivers to centralized processing centers or sending up red flags when wildfires appear, and has been designed to integrate seamlessly into the Department of the Interior’s Remote Automated Weather Stations system. EWAN’s power source, however, makes the project unique. Rather than relying on battery-operated sensors and transceivers, Voltree is working to perfect a method of harvesting energy from the trees themselves.

EWAN uses the small (usually 50-200 mV) current created by a pH imbalance between the tree and surrounding soil to power the system. The converter that powers each unit is fairly small (”about the size of a pack of gum”) and allows each sensor to operate for the lifetime of its arboreal host.

While Voltree’s pilot project focuses on wildfire monitoring and prevention, the company hopes to find broader uses for this type of self-powered, decentralized monitoring network. Researchers could easily use the system to monitor fragile ecosystems or gauge agricultural conditions, and Voltree has started exploring applications that would incoroprate [sic

] similar monitoring networks into border security.

Creative

Synthesis Blog

On The Media: A King's Farewell

Bob Greenfield points out things which were less important than Michael Jackson’s funeral: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the roughing-up  of ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China, and legislative attempts to address health-care and energy policy. Hats off to Greenfield and his colleagues at WNYC’s On the Media

On The Media: Transcript of “A King’s Farewell ” (July 10, 2009).

Nurse to Patient Ratios and Hospital-Acquired Infections

In response to Paul O’Neill’s opinion piece “Health Care’s Infectious Losses,” in the Times of July 6th, one letter stands out, which we here reprint in its entirety:

To the Editor:

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill leaves out a significant factor in his formula for reducing hospital-acquired infections and medical costs: making sure there are enough nurses taking care of patients.

For example, central venous catheter-associated bloodstream infections cost millions each year. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that this infection is more likely to occur when there are fewer nurses in the intensive-care unit, regardless of other infection control measures.

Infections are prevented by careful, constant monitoring and assessment of patients by the nurses in attendance. This cannot happen when nurses are assigned too many patients. Infection control is not just making rules — it’s about having the right number of professional nurses to carry them out.

Deborah Elliott,Deputy Executive Officer

New York State Nurses Association
Latham, N.Y., July 6, 2009

Medical care is by its nature labor-intensive. Nurses and other skilled staff act as force multipliers for physicians – and often make the difference between the mediocre medical care and excellent medical care. With respect to hospital-acquired infections, excellence and cost control are not in conflict.

Increase the ratio of nurses to patients – medical outcomes will improve – and what’s more, we’ll lose fewer nurses to burnout.

Letters | Cutting Hospital Infections to Cut Costs.

Disclosure: my wife is an R.N. and member of the New York State Nurses Association.

TouchTable video demonstration

Our friend Bill Campbell – our resident guru on Skype and other comms technologies, and always ahead of the curve – sent me this link to a PBS video about the new TouchTable

It’s part of the PBS/Wired Wired Science series, which is new to me.

At current prices – in excess of $90K – it’s going to take some time and/or big orders to drive prices down – but it’s one impressive tool.

TouchTable .

Terrible Problems with 911 Systems

9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal. By  Jason Kincaid at  TechCrunch.

Last night I got word that my parents had witnessed a tragic accident while driving in Northern California. I won’t get into the details, but suffice to say one person was killed and others were left bleeding, in various states of unconsciousness. Thank God my parents were not hurt in the accident, but they witnessed it first hand, as well as the disturbing aftermath.

Immediately after the accident, my parents and other witnesses began trying to dial 9-1-1. Attempt after attempt resulted in a busy signal. This isn’t unusual in the event of an emergency, as multiple dialers often tie up the lines to report the same incident. Except it seems that nobody managed to get through for far too long: emergency personal didn’t arrive for 20 minutes. The first officer to arrive at the scene said it took him two minutes to get there from the time he got the call. Which means that it took approximately 18 minutes for the news to reach him in the first place. Continue reading →