Todd Woody/Green Inc. Blog: Samsung Enters Solar Deal in California

Seth Woody reports from the Green Inc. blog at the Times

Samsung, the Japanese conglomerate best known to Americans for its televisions and cellphones, is jumping into the American solar business.

Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility serving much of the northern and central parts of the state, asked regulators last week to approve a series of 25-year contracts [pdf] for 130 megawatts’ worth of photovoltaic power plants to be built by Solar Project Solutions, a joint venture between Samsung America and ENCO Utility Services, a former subsidiary of the utility company Edison International.

Samsung’s first commercial solar plant in South Korea. Photo via Green Inc. blog at NYTimes.com

The deal is the latest of a spate of such agreements signed by California utilities as they take advantage of the increasing attractiveness of photovoltaic power as the price of solar modules falls and new competitors enter the market.

Unlike large solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to heat liquids to generate steam to run electricity-generating turbines, photovoltaic farms can be built relatively quickly near cities and existing transmission lines.

Todd Woody,–  Samsung Enters Solar Deal in California,

on the Green Inc. Blog (NYTimes.com)

Mr. Woody’s point about photovoltaic systems is well-taken: here’s another photovoltaic application, the Marine Corps’ recently announced GREENS system:

A year ago, U.S. Marines operating in the Arabian Desert only viewed the sun as the source of the region’s relentless heat. Recently, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Advanced Power Generation Future Naval Capabilities program introduced technology that allows the Marines to harness some of that sunshine to help power their field equipment.

Fueled by the sun, the Ground Renewable Expeditionary ENergy System (GREENS) is a 300-watt, photovoltaic/battery system that provides continuous power to Marines in the field. ONR began exploring the GREENS idea in fall 2008 in response to a Marine Corps requirement from Iraq for an expeditionary renewable power system.

“It’s vitally important to have power in the battlefield especially these days in an irregular warfare environment,” said Marine Col. Thomas Williams, a senior officer at ONR.

Via Solar Daily.

Link to Solar Energy Powers Marines on Battlefield – media release from the Public Affairs/Corporate Communications Office, Office of Naval Research








Cassie Rodenberg at Popular Mechanics: Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time

Solar power’s incremental steps forward keep coming faster and faster, and not on a single vector: large arrays to power the grid, specific installations where wiring is inefficient or impractical, and for small devices. Cassie Rodenberg, writing at PopularMechanics.com, writes about another step forward with solar power for relatively small devices. From Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled the world’s first solar-powered circuit in a January edition of ACS Nano. The technology shows particular promise for touchscreen devices, which could use the circuits as a direct source for sun-power. Not to be confused with solar cells, which convert sunlight energy to electricity and store it for later, this breakthrough involves circuits—electrical devices that provide paths for electricity to flow. This means that sunlight absorbed by the device can immediately use the energy to power the device.

Here’s how the circuit works: Electrons, here known as surface plasmons, oscillate on tiny molecules called nanoparticles. These plasmons act as a ‘super lenses,’ which gather all solar light hitting the circuit. Once the light’s collected, the particles pose as electrodes to ferry away the electricity for a device to use.

Currently, though, researchers can only produce and harness small amounts of energy from the photovoltaic circuits, nowhere near enough to power consumer electronics. But scientists are sure power production will only increase in the future with creative methods like stacking circuits to absorb and focus more light energy.

Self-charging photovoltaic circuitry might be used in display screen pixels or painted on the outside of iPads and smartphones to scavenge sunlight and charge the devices, according to Dawn Bonnell, a researcher on the project. It also could potentially offer just the right power solution for small robotic devices or help computers operate on light alone.

Cassie Rodenberg, Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time, at PopularMechanics.com

Tritium Leaks Trouble Nominees for Panel – NYTimes.com

MATTHEW L. WALD, writing on the Green Inc. blog at the Times, reports

WASHINGTON — Tritium leaks like the one that threatens the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant are undermining confidence in other reactors around the country, three experts nominated by President Obama to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday at their confirmation hearing.

The leaks by themselves do not appear to have had any impact on public health, one of the three, William D. Magwood IV, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The point is not that it’s not hurting anyone,” he said. “The point is it’s showing you don’t have your act together.”

via Tritium Leaks Trouble Nominees for Panel – NYTimes.com.

Smarter Sensors Start Going to Work – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Steve Lohr reports on tne Times’ Bits Blog that  Royal Dutch Shell is using high-tech sensor arrays in searchinh got  oil. It’s certainly a good thing if risks associated with oil exploration and and acquisition are lowered. But it’s hard not to be cynical about the face oil companies present to the public.

In the last couple of years, the research laboratories at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been working on the next generation of digital sensors. They are smarter, smaller, consume less energy, and they can communicate wirelessly.

Their promise, writ large, is to help link the digital world of computing to the physical world as never before. The payoff would be to bring data-rich measurement, more intelligence and higher levels of optimization to all sorts of fields – including energy, traffic management, food distribution and health care. Lots of companies are working on parts of the broad vision, and I. that oB.M.’s “Smarter Planet” advertising campaign is the probably clearest articulation of the vision.

Royal Dutch Shell and Hewlett-Packard are announcing on Monday a step toward the mainstream use of next-generation sensor technology. The application – on-land oil and gas exploration – points toward the potential gains from advanced sensing systems.

No dollar figure is attached to the multiyear agreement, and Shell isn’t saying where it plans to first try this high-tech prospecting. But the oil company says the vastly more detailed seismic data collection and analysis should help it pinpoint new oil and gas reserves in difficult areas like under salt formations in the Middle East and deep pockets of natural gas in the North America.

Sensors are only one tool among the set of technologies needed in any number of industries. To make complex physical systems smarter also requires advances in storage, networking, data mining and analytics software. Still, the sensors are the vital measurement, data-harvesting and communications technology in the physical world – the digital eyes, ears and nose out there. The sensors may be an ingredient, but an essential one – just as the microprocessor may not be everything in computing, but it is the gateway technology that makes everything else possible.

In seismic prospecting for oil, big “thumper trucks” pound the ground to make sound waves that above-ground sensors then monitor. Today, 10,000 or 20,000 sensors, connected by wires, might be spread over an area 25 miles by 25 miles. With the Shell-H.P. sensing system, hundreds of thousands, up to a million, wireless sensors – about 3 inches by 4 inches – can be spread across a similar area. Each sensor, listening to the underground seismic echoes, is a data channel.

“If you can increase the number of data channels, the better you are able to listen,” explained Wim Walk, a geophysical scientist for Shell.

Hundreds of times more data will be generated with the new system. The raw data will be collected, mined and analyzed to create pictures of the geological formations and petroleum finds deep in the Earth.

Using the new technology, scientists say, opens the door to new levels of clarity – as in the difference between watching “Avatar” in 3-D or a regular theater screen.

via Smarter Sensors Start Going to Work – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

A Previous Shooting Death at the Hands of Alabama Suspect – NYTimes.com

By SHAILA DEWAN and KATIE ZEZIMA

Published: February 14, 2010

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — On Friday, this city of rocket scientists and brainy inventors was stunned when a neuroscientist with a Harvard Ph.D. was arrested in the shooting deaths of three of her colleagues after she was denied tenure.

But that was only the first surprise in the tale of the neuroscientist, Amy Bishop, who was regarded as fiercely intelligent and had seemed to have a promising career in biotechnology. Every day since has produced a new revelation from Dr. Bishop’s past, each more bizarre than the last.

On Saturday, the police in Braintree, Mass., said that she had fatally shot her brother in 1986 and questioned whether the decision to dismiss the case as an accident had been the right one.

The target of the mail bomb was Dr. Paul Rosenberg, according to The Boston Globe, which first reported that the couple had been questioned in the case. After returning home from a vacation, Dr. Rosenberg opened a package that contained two 6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries, The Globe reported. The doctor and his wife fled and called the police.

Officials said that Dr. Bishop was concerned that Dr. Rosenberg would give her a negative evaluation on her doctorate work, the newspaper wrote, and that they were concerned about the incident involving her brother. The authorities in Boston searched Dr. Bishop’s computer at the time and found a novel she was working on about a scientist who killed her brother and atoned by excelling at her work, The Globe reported.

Though he firmly protested his wife’s innocence in the earlier cases, Mr. Anderson said he remained mystified over Friday’s shootings, which left three professors dead and three other people wounded after a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

Dr. Bishop was charged with capital murder; three charges of attempted murder were added on Sunday. Mr. Anderson said he did not know of any specific incident that could have led to the shooting, and did not know that his wife allegedly had a gun when she went to the meeting.

via A Previous Shooting Death at the Hands of Alabama Suspect – NYTimes.com.

Integrated comms systems – bridging multiple two-way radio , telephone, and VOIP systems

Communications-Applied Technology makes this

ICRI-2P

Incident Commanders’ Radio Interface

2pandreel.jpg

I don’t know how long they’ve been making them — but this is the type of technology that New York City cops and firefighters had been demanding for years

before 9/11—that, to a large extent, they still don’t have. So it would seem that, at least at present, the obstacles are political — not technological — to having different groups of first responders communicate with each other.


BBC News – Australian grandmother beats off attacking shark

The BBC reports that an Australian woman, attacked by a shark, has survived, despite the loss of 40% of her blood volume, and with her sense of humor entirely intact.

An Australian grandmother has survived a shark attack by repeatedly punching and kicking the animal after it “ripped off” part of her body.

Paddy Trumbull, 60, suffered deep bite wounds and lost a huge amount of blood in the incident while snorkelling near the Whitsunday Islands, Queensland.

Doctors say Mrs Trumbull is fortunate to be alive after suffering such a ferocious mauling.

At hospital, she joked about now having to get a “remodelled bottom”.

Speaking from her hospital bed to local media, she said that while snorkelling from a chartered boat with her husband and others, she felt “the most almighty huge tug” and “knew immediately what it was.”

“I turned around and I saw this huge shark.”

Mrs Trumbull said: “I then thought ‘this shark’s not going to get the better of me’ and I started punching it on the nose, punching, punching, punching.

“And then it got me under the water, but not much because I started kicking at its neck.”

She said she had “a bit of a tug of war” with the 1.5m (5ft) shark, knowing that it had ripped her flesh as she could see blood, but she felt no pain.

She was pulled on board the boat and given first aid, before being airlifted to Mackay Base Hospital where she underwent surgery.

Surgeon Mark Flanagan said: “We can estimate that she lost about 40 per cent of her blood volume from the degree of shock that she had when she came in, and the fact that we required to give her several units of blood.”

Mrs Trumbull said she was happy to be alive. “I think they’re going to get me a counsellor on Monday, to sort of sort it out, and I have to have a new, remodelled bottom, so that’s a positive.”

via BBC News – Australian grandmother beats off attacking shark.

White House Advisor argues that attacks are not, in fact, "jihad"

From Under the Radar, Josh Gerstein’s blog on Politico.com:

President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, argued that 9/11 and other attacks are not, in fact, jihad.

“They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. We are not waging a war against terrorism because terrorism is but a tactic that will never be defeated any more than a tactics of war will. Rather such thinking is a recipe for endless conflict….We are at war with al Qaeda and its extremist allies and any comment to the contrary is just inaccurate. We will destroy that organization.”

– John Brennan, speaking at NYU 13 February 2010

From Gerstein’s post, Brennan, unruffled, talks terror at NYU

President Barack Obama’s embattled counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, delivered an emphatic defense Saturday of the Obama administration’s rhetorical approach to terrorism–and also slipped in a few criticisms of Bush administration policies he suggested alienated Muslims at home and abroad.

In a speech at New York University’s law school, Brennan gave no nod to the calls for his resignation last week from the top Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees. (Sen. Lindsey Graham R-S.C. also joined that bandwagon Sunday.)

Brennan seemed at ease speaking to the largely Muslim audience, which included Islamic law students. In fact, he broke out his Arabic at some length, drawing a warm reaction from the crowd. (Scroll to 5:43 in the first video below for that chunk. I think I hear the words youth and student in there.)

Is Brennan the highest-ranking American official who speaks Arabic? If so, is he the highest-ranking American official ever ro speak Arabic? By refusing to cede to al-Qaeda and its ilk the question of their moral legitimacy in their so-called “jihad,” and by being frank about Amerucab misconduct, the Administration has taken a firm step towards increasing U.S. credibility – and started to cut off Al Gaeda’s air supply: implicit or material support for al-Qaeda, and the logical corollary, opposition to the United States.

More from Brennan, unruffled, talks terror at NYU

Brennan also charged that some actions by the U.S. government, presumably the Bush Administration, underscored perceptions that the U.S. was in conflict with Islam. He cited as examples of overreach: “Violations of the Patriot Act. Surveillance that has been excessive. Policies perceived as profiling. Overinclusive no-fly lists subjecting law abiding individuals to unnecessary searches and inconvenience. Creating an unhelpful atmosphere around many Muslim charities that made many Muslims hesitant to fulfill their sacred obligation of Zakat.”

Brennan’s statement that some individuals, presumably Muslims, were subjected to “excessive” surveillance is one I have not heard before from government officials and one which will hearten civil liberties advocates who have claimed that mosques were subjected to unwarranted scrutiny. – Josh Gerstein

Brennan, who mentioned that he is Catholic, blamed religious leaders for spreading myths about Islam being a religion of violence. “Those who purport to be religious are frequently the most egregious purveyors of ignorance, prejudice and discrimination and it must stop,” he said. He did not single out any particular denominations or faith leaders.

Brennan disappointed some in the audience by saying that Obama has no plans to back away from support for the Israel. “It’s tough, but we’re not going to separate ourselves from Israel,” Brennan said, according to Fox News.

At times, Brennan suggested that the entirety of the American Muslim community has always stood 100% behind U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. “America has rarely noticed that American Muslims, such as yourself, have always denounced violent extremism,” Brennan said, citing the head of the NYU center.

That blanket statement may overstate the case somewhat, since some prominent Muslims have been unwilling to endorse U.S. designations of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists.

Another moment that was less than crystal clear was Brennan’s insistence that “we do not believe we need to make a choice between” national security and civil liberties, which came moments after he declared: “At times, we are unfortunately forced to make some painful decisions that we would not make under ordinary circumstances.”

Brennan, unruffled, talks terror at NYU

from

Josh Gerstein’s blog, Under the Radar – at Politico.com








Portable Armored Wall System Replaces Sandbags

Portable Armored Wall System Replaces Sandbags.

Marines in Afghanistan might soon scrap the sandbags. Instead, they’re snapping together armored walls that connect like Legos.

The Marines Corps in December spent $797,400 on 14 kits of McCurdy’s Armor, a patent-pending portable wall system. The service has already tested 25 kits.

The 6.5-foot-tall units can be assembled into bulletproof walls and forts — a process that can take less than an hour. This could save days’ worth of work digging trenches, laying sandbags and constructing outposts, according to the manufacturer, New Jersey-based Dynamic Defense Materials. “We’ve seen them used on everything from a podium to a guard tower to a long wall,” says Joe Dimond, a product specialist for the company.

The product offers protection from mortars, grenades, rockets and improvised explosive devices. It has aluminum frames that connect using steel pins, and the units can be arranged in several formations: U-shape, V-shape, J-shape or a wall.

It also has ballistic windows that open and close so service members can fire downrange. Four men can assemble one unit in less than 10 minutes without any tools or equipment, according to the company’s website.

“If you’re worried about armor-piercing rounds, you can also put on a second layer of armor,” Dimond says. “And you can add more if you’re going to be there a while.”

The product was named for Ryan S. McCurdy, a Marine who was killed in 2006 by insurgents in Iraq while pulling a wounded friend to safety.

Ham Ops First to Report Haiti Quake « Ham Radio – Ham Events – Ham Reviews – Ham Links – Ham News

KE2YK’s Random Oscillations reports that Ham operators were the first to report the recent earthquake in Haiti:   Ham Ops First to Report Haiti Quake

Over the past few days, Charlie Wooten has had his ear on his ham radio. Steadily listening to updates from the devastation in Haiti.

He’s one of hundreds of amateur radio operators or “hams” in our area. He runs his ham from what he calls his shack at his home.

When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, hams were the first ones to break the news.




Intelligence officers diverted to deal with legal action from former detainees – Telegraph

Gordon Rayner and Duncan Gardham report in the Telegraph.co.uk that UK intelligence agencies are complaining that their officers are being diverted from intelligence work to prepare for lawsuits alleging human rights violations.  One’s view of this may depend on attitudes towards the alleged violations – and an assessment of the specific claims being litigated.

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