Future Energy eNews        IntegrityResearchInstitute.org        Sept.  8,  2005

 

1) English Words Identified on a Triangular Craft - Establishes US ownership of covert aircraft

2) Entropy: The New Order - Einsteinian implicate order emerges from arbitrary power law

3) Gigahertz Signals Restores Youth in Elderly - Dr. Norm Shealy stimulates DHEA with PEMF

4) Oil Given as the Reason for Iraq War - Bush says "protection of the country's vast oil fields"

5) Rising Gas Prices Make Drivers Rethink Lifestyle Choices - Looks at the benefits of hybrids 

6) Time-Varying Magnetic Field Affects Neurotransmitter Release Treats insomnia

7) Soil Found to Release CO2 in Britain - Exactly cancels the UK 13 ton/yr Kyoto reduction

8) Tabletop Fusion - Sonofusion shows "unmistakable signs of hydrogen fusion"


1) English Words Identified on a Triangular Craft

 

Occurred : 4/9/2005 19:09 (Entered as : 04/09/1905 19:09)
Reported: 4/13/2005 8:58:22 PM 20:58
Posted: 4/16/2005
Location: Sidney, TX
Shape: Triangle
Duration:3 minutes

English words identified on black triangular craft.

On 04-09-2005 I saw what I believe to be a UFO in Comanche County Texas at 9:12 local time. I offer some unique observations.

That evening, I was walking back to my motor home after wildboar hunting in an unpopulated area that I lease for hunting. The sky was clear; wind calm and the sun had just set. The sky was growing darker and darker blue straight above and stars were beginning to show. The sky was becoming black in the east. The setting sun was still keeping the western horizon illuminated and indirect lighting from the west made it possible to see my way without a flashlight.

I had my .243 Win. Remington 700 varmint rifle of which I am a quite an accomplished shooter. It is considered a "high-powered" rifle. I do quite a bit of bench rest competitive shooting with it as well as hunting. The rifle is set up with a high-tech "Leupold" optical sight, (scope) which is extremely accurate and highly specialized for great light gathering ability and performs best in low light conditions. It is not what is called a "night vision" sight. The scope magnifies the target image with great sharpness and definition and the magnification is adjustable from 4.5 to 14 times that of the natural image.

Upon my return to the motor home, I was tired after a long walk. I had carried quite a bit of equipment with me. I sat on a chair, took my eyeglasses off and toweled my face as it is already becoming hot in Texas. While I rested, without my glasses on, I noticed three very "unfocused" lights to my south and these lights were moving toward me. Immediately I put my glasses back on and saw what I believe was a UFO. (a) Is the appearance of the vehicle without my glasses on and (b) is the view I had with my glasses on.) (I drew the images on my pc) The object approached from the south-southwest and while moving north-north east, passed almost directly overhead making no sound whatsoever. I estimate its altitude to be somewhere about 800 feet and its airspeed speed approximately 30 mph. It "floated" and did not fly as it obviously had insufficient airspeed to fly. (I am a Physicist & an FAA Licensed Pilot) While the sky was almost entirely black behind it, I could clearly see its underside as it was illuminated from the fading sunlight to the west. I estimate that the machine was about 60 feet wide and 80 feet long and 10 feet thick at the rear. Under its belly, there was a straight line going from its leading tip toward the center of the aft edge of the fuselage, which was perpendicular to its travel. This straight edge clearly showed its shape to be three-dimensional. The straight line showed that its belly was V-shaped, much like the hull of a speedboat. It was similar to the space shuttle as when viewed from in front and below the shuttle.

This machine was directly over me and I was alone in the middle of nowhere, therefore, I felt quite "uneasy." It made no threatening moves whatsoever, but I aimed my rifle at it and through the riflescope, which was set on 8.5 power, I could clearly see surface detail in explicit detail. The machine’s surface detail appeared to be covered with well-fitted tiles, much like the ceramic tiles used on the United States Space Shuttle. Then in the fading light, I noticed a distinct marking.

This marking was absolutely shocking, as I could actually read it! It was white print outlined in black on a red arrow pointing toward a rectangle of sorts. The arrow pointed at a something rectangular that I cannot define, but I clearly could read these three words, “EMERGENCY RELEASE and RESCUE.” In the same place were other words that appeared too fuzzy to read. I suspect that these words were “PULL FOR...” Instantly I realized that this was a military machine and no “flying saucer.” I felt much better as I knew that these were surface details that were intended to help rescue people access and then be able to remove the pilots on board in the event of a crash.

I kept the crosshairs on the center of the aircraft as it disappeared into the darkness but as I realized it was “one of ours” and it was not a threat to my own personal safety (I think) I put the rifle safety back on. I can see however that others may have “defensively” shot at it --- and that may have resulted in a crash of the vehicle.

I am somewhat “pissed off” at the military as while this area is directly under the Ft. Hood, Texas MOPA and practice flights are flown daily, really - they should not be taking chances like this where someone on the ground could actually be shooting the damned things down! I am sure that the military pilots (if it even had a crew…) were aware of my presence but they NEVER expected possible “offensive action” to be taken against them on this low level flight. The last thing I would have ever have wanted would have taken a “defensive” shot and then find American military pilots onboard in the wreckage.

For further information

 

See  http://www.ufocasebook.com/sydneytexas.html for physicist's illustration.


See http://users.erols.com/iri/EnewsOct7,2004.htm for "Black Flying Triangles" report from NIDS

 

See http://users.erols.com/iri/EnewsJan6,2003.htm "Electric Propulsion Systems for Flying Triangles"

2) Entropy: The new order

CONSTANTINO TSALLIS has a single equation written on the blackboard in his office. It looks like one of the most famous equations in physics, but look more closely and it's a little bit different, decorated with some extra symbols and warped into a peculiar new form.

Tsallis, based at the Brazilian Centre for Research in Physics, Rio de Janeiro, is excited to have created this new equation. And no wonder: his unassuming arrangement of symbols has stimulated hundreds of researchers to publish more than a thousand papers in the past decade, describing strange patterns in fluid flows, in magnetic fields issuing from the sun and in the subatomic debris created in particle accelerators. But there is something even more remarkable about Tsallis's equation: it came to him in a daydream.

In 1985, in a classroom in Mexico City, Tsallis was listening as a colleague explained something to a student. On the chalkboard they had written a very ordinary algebraic expression, pq, representing some number p raised to the power q In Tsallis's line of work - describing the collective properties of large numbers of particles - the letter "p" usually stands for probability: the probability that a particle will have a particular velocity, say. Tsallis stared at the formula from a distance and his mind drifted off. "There were these pqs all over the board," he recalls, "and it suddenly came to my mind - like a flash - that with powers of probabilities one might do some unusual but possibly quite interesting physics."

The physics involved may be more than quite interesting, however. The standard means of describing the collective properties of large numbers of particles - known as statistical mechanics - has been hugely successful for more than a century, but it has also been rather limited in its scope: you can only apply it to a narrow range of systems. Now, with an insight plucked out of thin air, Tsallis may have changed all that.

Developed in the 19th century, statistical mechanics enabled physicists to overcome an imposing problem. Ordinary materials such as water, iron or glass are made of myriad atoms. But since it is impossible to calculate in perfect detail how every individual atom or molecule will move, it seems as if it might never be possible to understand the behaviour of such substances at the atomic level.

The solution, as first suggested by the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, lay in giving up hope of perfect understanding and working with probabilities instead. Boltzmann argued that knowing the probabilities for the particles to be in any of their various possible configurations would enable someone to work out the overall properties of the system. Going one step further, he also made a bold and insightful guess about these probabilities - that any of the many conceivable configurations for the particles would be equally probable.

Deeper beauty

Boltzmann's idea works, and has enabled physicists to make mathematical models of thousands of real materials, from simple crystals to superconductors. But his work also has a deeper beauty. For a start, it reflects the fact that many quantities in nature - such as the velocities of molecules in a gas - follow "normal" statistics. That is, they are closely grouped around the average value, with a "bell curve" distribution.

The theory also explains why, if left to their own devices, systems tend to get disorganised. Boltzmann argued that any system that can be in several different configurations is most likely to be in the more spread out and disorganised condition. Air molecules in a box, for example, can gather neatly in a corner, but are more likely to fill the space evenly. That's because there are overwhelmingly more arrangements of the particles that will produce the spread out, jumbled state than arrangements that will concentrate the molecules in a corner. This way of thinking led to the famous notion of entropy - a measure of the amount of disorder in a system. In its most elegant formulation, Boltzmann's statistical mechanics, which was later developed mathematically by the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, asserts that, under many conditions, a physical system will act so as to maximise its entropy.

And yet Boltzmann and Gibbs's statistical mechanics doesn't explain everything: a great swathe of nature eludes its grasp entirely. Boltzmann's guess about equal probabilities only works for systems that have settled down to equilibrium, enjoying, for example, the same temperature throughout. The theory fails in any system where destabilising external sources of energy are at work, such as the haphazard motion of turbulent fluids or the fluctuating energies of cosmic rays. These systems don't follow normal statistics, but another pattern instead.

"In Mexico City, coming out of his reverie, Tsallis wrote up some notes on his idea"

If you repeatedly measure the difference in fluid velocity at two distinct points in a turbulent fluid, for instance, the probability of finding a particular velocity difference is roughly proportional to the amount of that difference raised to the power of some exponent. This pattern is known as a "power law", and such patterns turn up in many other areas of physics, from the distribution of energies of cosmic rays to the fluctuations of river levels or wind speeds over a desert. Because ordinary statistical mechanics doesn't explain power laws, their atomic-level origins remain largely mysterious, which is why many physicists find Tsallis's mathematics so enticing.

In Mexico City, coming out of his reverie, Tsallis wrote up some notes on his idea, and soon came to a formula that looked something like the standard formula for the Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy - but with a subtle difference. If he set q to 1 in the formula - so that pq became the probability p - the new formula reduced to the old one. But if q was not equal to 1, it made the formula produce something else. This led Tsallis to a new definition of entropy. He called it q entropy.

Back then, Tsallis had no idea what q might actually signify, but the way this new entropy worked mathematically suggested he might be on to something. In particular, the power-law pattern tumbles out of the theory quite naturally. Over the past decade, researchers have shown that Tsallis's mathematics seem to describe power-law behaviour accurately in a wide range of phenomena, from fluid turbulence to the debris created in the collisions of high-energy particles. But while the idea of maximising q entropy seems to work empirically, allowing people to fit their data to power-law curves and come up with a value of q for individual systems, it has also landed Tsallis in some hot water. The new mathematics seems to work, yet no one knows what the q entropy really represents, or why any physical system should maximise it.

Degrees of chaos

And for this reason, many physicists remain sceptical, or worse. "I have to say that I don't buy it at all," says physicist Cosma Shalizi of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who criticises the mathematical foundations of Tsallis's approach. As he points out, the usual Boltzmann procedure for maximising the entropy in statistical mechanics assumes a fixed value for the average energy of a system, a natural idea. But to make things work out within the Tsallis framework, researchers have to fix the value of another quantity - a "generalised" energy - that has no clear physical interpretation. "I have yet to encounter anyone," says Shalizi, "who can explain why this should be natural."

To his critics, Tsallis's success is little more than sleight of hand: the equation may simply provide a convenient way to generate power laws, which researchers can then fit to data by choosing the right value of q "My impression," says Guido Caldarelli of La Sapienza University in Rome, "is that the method really just fits data by adjusting a parameter. I'm not yet convinced there's new physics here." Physicist Peter Grassberger of the University of Wuppertal in Germany goes further. "It is all nonsense," he says. "It has led to no new predictions, nor is it based on rational arguments."

The problem is that most work applying Tsallis's ideas has simply chosen a value of q to make the theory fit empirical data, without tying q to the real dynamics of the system in any deeper way: there's nothing to show why these dynamics depart from Boltzmann's picture of equal probabilities. Tsallis, who is now at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, acknowledges this is a limitation, but suggests that a more fundamental explanation is already on its way.

"Tsallis has reawakened physicists to fundamental questions they have never quite answered"

Power laws, he argues, should tend to arise in "weakly chaotic" systems. In this kind of system, small perturbations might not be enough to alter the arrangement of molecules. As a result, the system won't "explore" all possible configurations over time. In a properly chaotic system, on the other hand, even tiny perturbations will keep sending the system into new configurations, allowing it to explore all its states as required for Boltzmann statistics.

Tsallis argues that if physicists can adequately understand the details of this "exploring behaviour", they should be able to predict values of q from first principles. In particular, he proposes, some as yet unknown single parameter - closely akin to q - should describe the degree of chaos in any system. Working out its value by studying a system's basic dynamics would then let physicists predict the value of q that then emerges in its statistics.

Other theoretical work seems to support this possibility. For example, in a paper soon to appear in Physical Review E, physicist Alberto Robledo of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City has examined several classic models that physicists have used to explore the phenomenon of chaos. What makes these models useful is that they can be tuned to be more or less chaotic - and so used to explore the transition from one kind of behaviour to another. Using these model systems, Robledo has been able to carry out Tsallis's prescription, deriving a value of q just from studying the system's fundamental dynamics. That value of q then reproduces intricate power-law properties for these systems at the threshold of chaos. "This work shows that q can be deduced from first principles," Tsallis says.

While Robledo has tackled theoretical issues, other researchers have made the same point with real observations. In a paper just published, Leonard Burlaga and Adolfo Vinas at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, study fluctuations in the properties of the solar wind - the stream of charged particles that flows outward from the sun - and show that they conform to Tsallis's ideas. They have found that the dynamics of the solar wind, as seen in changes in its velocity and magnetic field strength, display weak chaos of the type envisioned by Tsallis. Burlaga and Vinas have also found that the fluctuations of the magnetic field follow power laws that fit Tsallis's framework with q set to 1.75 (Physica A, vol 356, p 275).

The chance that a more comprehensive formulation of Tsallis's q entropy might eventually be found intrigues physicist Ezequiel Cohen of the Rockefeller University in New York City. "I think a good part of the establishment takes an unfair position towards Tsallis's work," he says. "The critique that all he does is 'curve fitting' is, in my opinion, misplaced."

Cohen has also started building his own work on Tsallis's foundations. Two years ago, with Christian Beck of Queen Mary, University of London, he proposed an idea known as "superstatistics" that would incorporate the statistics of both Boltzmann and Tsallis within a larger framework.

In this work they revisited the limitation of Boltzmann's statistical mechanics. Boltzmann's models cannot cope with any system in which external forces churn up differences such as variations in temperature. A particle moving through such a system would experience many temperatures for short periods and its fluctuations would reflect an average of the ordinary Boltzmann statistics for all those different temperatures. Cohen and Beck showed that such averaged statistics, emerging out of the messy non-uniformity of real systems, take the very same form as Tsallis statistics, and lead to power laws. In one striking example, Beck showed how the distribution of the energies of cosmic rays could emerge from random fluctuations in the temperature of the hot matter where they were originally created.

Cohen thinks that, if nothing else, Tsallis's powers of probabilities have served to reawaken physicists to fundamental questions they have never quite answered. After all Boltzmann's idea, though successful, was also based on a guess; Albert Einstein disliked Boltzmann's arbitrary assumption of "equal probabilities" and insisted that a proper theory of matter had to rest on a deep understanding of the real dynamics of particles.

That understanding still eludes us, but Tsallis may have taken us closer. It is possible that, in his mysterious q entropy, Tsallis has discovered a kind of entropy just as useful as Boltzmann's and especially suited to the real-world systems in which the traditional theory fails. "Tsallis made the first attempt to go beyond Boltzmann," says Cohen. The door is now open for others to follow.

Mark Buchanan's latest book is Small World, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003


3) Gigahertz Stimulates DHEA in Elderly Patients

Excerpt from Bioelectromagnetic Healing, 6th Edition, Thomas Valone, PhD, p. 23 http://users.erols.com/iri/Bioenergetics.html

A medical doctor who worked with Nobel Prize winner, John C. Eccles, Dr. Norm Shealy has a journal publishing history extending back to his first papers in 1957 and neurophysiology papers with Eccles in the 1960’s. He is the inventor of the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device in 1967, as well as the recent Shealy RelaxMate II. He is also noted for BEMS procedures that include Dorsal Column Stimulation - The control of pain by electrically stimulating the dorsal column of the spinal cord, and Facet Rhizotomy - The permanent, safe numbing of an irritating spinal joint nerve.

However, the most impressive achievement for longevity, that he discussed at a recent conference which I attended, is his Five Sacred Rings. These are different energetic circuits associated with acupuncture points which specifically optimize DHEA, Neurotensin, Beta-Endorphin, Aldosterone and markedly reduce Free Radicals. The one that stimulates the youth hormone, DHEA, is called the Ring of Fire and involves a 50 gigahertz signal device (GigaTENS) that touches the skin, one at a time, at several points in the circuit. Through repeated laboratory testing for careful monitoring of DHEA levels, Dr. Shealy was able to confirm the protocol that restores youthful levels of the master hormone DHEA by stimulating the pituitary gland to produce it. Shealy describes the unit as a Trip-Modulated GigaTENS with Optional Bipolar Spike as covered in his US Patent No. 5,851,223. The product has been incorporated into the ShealyTENS which is available by prescription for $695 from Self-Health Systems http://www.selfhealthsystems.com/ (417-267-2900).

His new book, Life Beyond 100: Secrets of the Fountain of Youth, contains the details of this amazing life-extension BEMS discovery. He also has a holistic university that offers degrees related to integrative health care. Dr. Shealy is also responsible for organizing the first accredited Energy Medicine program in the country, which is available at Greenwich University.

References

Dr. Norm Shealy Website: http://www.normshealy.net/bibliography.htm

 

Holistic University: http://www.hugs-edu.org/

http://www.hugs-edu.org/sitemap.html

 

Bioelectromagnetic Healing on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964107058/qid=1126141288/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7979356-1241431?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


4) Bush Gives New Reason for Iraq War
    By Jennifer Loven, The Associated Press, Wednesday 31 August 2005, reprinted in Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/31/bush_gives_new_reason_for_iraq_war/

Says US must prevent oil fields from falling into hands of terrorists.

    Coronado, California - President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

    The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy's fleet, said terrorists would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

    "We will defeat the terrorists," Bush said. "We will build a free Iraq that will fight terrorists instead of giving them aid and sanctuary."

    Appearing at Naval Air Station North Island to commemorate the anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory over Japan, Bush compared his resolve to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's in the 1940s and said America's mission in Iraq is to turn it into a democratic ally just as the United States did with Japan after its 1945 surrender. Bush's V-J Day ceremony did not fall on the actual anniversary. Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945 - Aug. 14 in the United States because of the time difference.

    Democrats said Bush's leadership falls far short of Roosevelt's.

    "Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led America to victory in World War II because they laid out a clear plan for success to the American people, America's allies, and America's troops," said Howard Dean, Democratic Party chairman. "President Bush has failed to put together a plan, so despite the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, we are not making the progress that we should be in Iraq. The troops, our allies, and the American people deserve better leadership from our commander in chief."

    The speech was Bush's third in just over a week defending his Iraq policies, as the White House scrambles to counter growing public concern about the war. But the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast drew attention away; the White House announced during the president's remarks that he was cutting his August vacation short to return to Washington, D.C., to oversee the federal response effort.

    After the speech, Bush hurried back to Texas ahead of schedule to prepare to fly back to the nation's capital today. He was to return to the White House on Friday, after spending more than four weeks operating from his ranch in Crawford.

    Bush's August break has been marked by problems in Iraq.

    It has been an especially deadly month there for US troops, with the number of those who have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 now nearing 1,900.

    The growing death toll has become a regular feature of the slightly larger protests that Bush now encounters everywhere he goes - a movement boosted by a vigil set up in a field down the road from the president's ranch by a mother grieving the loss of her soldier son in Iraq.

    Cindy Sheehan arrived in Crawford only days after Bush did, asking for a meeting so he could explain why her son and others are dying in Iraq. The White House refused, and Sheehan's camp turned into a hub of activity for hundreds of activists around the country demanding that troops be brought home.

    This week, the administration also had to defend the proposed constitution produced in Iraq at US urging. Critics fear the impact of its rejection by many Sunnis, and say it fails to protect religious freedom and women's rights.

    At the naval base, Bush declared, "We will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure" from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

    "If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. "They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."


5) Soaring Gas Prices Make Drivers Rethink Lifestyle Choices

 

 

 

 

 

By GAIL SCHONTZLER, Chronicle Staff Writer,  Bozeman Daily,  Chronicle, Sep 7, 2005 http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2005/09/07/features/lifestyles/01copegas.txt

 

Getting great gas mileage can be like a game for Judy Walker. Driving around Yellowstone National Park last week, she got 53 miles per gallon in her hybrid car, a 4-year-old Toyota Prius. "It's kind of fun being on the leading edge," said Walker, 58, a bookseller at Borders Books, whose license plate frame declares that she'd "rather be knitting."

"I would buy another Prius in a heartbeat," she said. "I just like the concept of not burning gas."

Walker has found that in stop-and-go driving around Bozeman, she'd "rather be knitting."

"I would buy another Prius in a heartbeat," she said. "I just like the concept of not burning gas."

Walker has found that in stop-and-go driving around Bozeman, she's likely to get only 38 mpg, but that's still far better than most cars on the road. She only has to fill up at the pump once every three or four weeks. Hybrid cars use both a gasoline engine and an electric engine to save energy and cut gasoline consumption. "My husband and I have tried to live pretty green for quite a while," she said, "and this is one of our ways to do it." With gasoline hitting record high prices, lots of drivers are considering lifestyle changes to cope with the new reality. Those who have already found ways to save on fuel -- by riding bicycles, taking the Bobcat Transit bus, car pooling or driving smaller cars or hybrid cars -- are feeling pretty virtuous. Some people are even thinking the unthinkable for Montanans -- giving up their love affair with the sports utility vehicle. "People are trading in their SUVs for gas-mileage cars," said Jeff Kayser, a sales manager at Ressler Motors. He said he has three customers on waiting lists for the Prius hybrids, but expects the cars to arrive in a couple weeks. Last year, there were news reports of waiting lists of up to six months. "We bought 25 (used) Toyota Corollas yesterday because of this (high gas prices)," Kayser added. "We usually carry one or two." Auto dealer Dick Walter ran an advertisement in last week's Chronicle that listed the gas mileage on his Hyundais, Subarus and Volkswagens. The VW Jetta led the pack with 41 mpg in highway driving.

"We've never run an ad like that," Walter said. "Obviously, fuel is on the minds of all our customers. "I had one customer say to me, 'When my fuel costs start rivaling my car payment, I've got to do something.'" Sports utility vehicles now can cost $75 to fill up at the pump, Walter said. His own company's costs for filling the tank of every car on the lot have tripled in the last nine months.

Customers are asking themselves whether they really need a three-quarter-ton diesel truck, when the price of diesel has gone 50 cents a gallon higher than regular gasoline, he said.

"I used a large pickup to move my daughter to Missoula," Walter said. "The fuel cost $110, there and back. I used to go to Missoula for $25."

Gallatin County Commissioner Bill Murdock said he''s costs for filling the tank of every car on the lot have tripled in the last nine months.

Customers are asking themselves whether they really need a three-quarter-ton diesel truck, when the price of diesel has gone 50 cents a gallon higher than regular gasoline, he said.

"I used a large pickup to move my daughter to Missoula," Walter said. "The fuel cost $110, there and back. I used to go to Missoula for $25."

Gallatin County Commissioner Bill Murdock said he''s costs for filling the tank of every car on the lot have tripled in the last nine months.

Customers are asking themselves whether they really need a three-quarter-ton diesel truck, when the price of diesel has gone 50 cents a gallon higher than regular gasoline, he said.

"I used a large pickup to move my daughter to Missoula," Walter said. "The fuel cost $110, there and back. I used to go to Missoula for $25."

Gallatin County Commissioner Bill Murdock said he's not driving his Land Rover anywhere near as much as he used to, because it gets only 18 mpg. He's quick to point out that that's a lot better than Suburbans, which get around 12 to 14 mpg. "We do think about car pooling now when we go to West Yellowstone," Murdock said. The downside is that if he and fellow County Commissioner Joe Skinner ride in the same car together, people assume they're "doing dirty things" in violation of the state's open meetings laws. Fellow Commissioner John Vincent volunteered that he still drives to work every day in a 1980 Audi that gets 40 mpg, as long as he doesn't drive faster than 55 mph.

The four-cylinder car has survived 430,000 miles with no major engine, clutch or transmission work, Vincent claimed.

"It''t drive faster than 55 mph.

The four-cylinder car has survived 430,000 miles with no major engine, clutch or transmission work, Vincent claimed.

"It's a great high-mileage car and I'm still driving it," he said, adding in the interests of full disclosure, "It doesn't look real great."

Elaine Peterson, a librarian at Montana State University, commutes daily from Livingston in her Toyota Corolla, which gets 35 mpg on the open highway.

"I don't like the high price" of gasoline, she said, but added she doesn't have any other choice than to commute. "I am getting really great mileage." At least one customer at Owenhouse Hardware's bike shop was planning to cut down on his driving. A fellow came in to buy night lights for his bike, saying, "It's cheaper than driving,'" recalled Steve Apple, bike mechanic.

Chris Saboda, owner of Bangtail Bikes, said soaring gas prices haven't triggered any rush of customers to buy bicycles. However, 2005 had already been a big one for bike sales, even before the sudden spike in gas prices. He gave most of the credit for strong sales to "the Lance Armstrong factor," the inspiring story of the man who beat the odds against cancer and won the Tour de France seven times. "I think it's health-reflective, not gas-reflective," Saboda said, that more people are bicycling. He used to take road rides up South Third Avenue or to Hyalite or Bridger Bowl and see two or three other bicyclists. Now he sees 20 or 30. Whether more drivers will consider switching to bicycles will depend a lot on having safe bike routes, he said. His daughter rides to Sacajawea Middle School every day, taking advantage of a paved bike path that parallels but is separate from the road and its fast-moving cars. "It would be so nice having paths going all around Bozeman," Saboda said. As if high gas prices weren't enough to motivate drivers to replace their gas guzzlers, Congress has come up with some new incentives in the latest energy bill. Starting Jan. 1, a tax credit worth up to $3,400 (depending on the vehicle's fuel efficiency) will be available for people buying a gas-electric hybrid and clean-diesel cars. That's even better than the $2,000 tax deduction available this year for buying a hybrid car, because the tax credit directly reduces the amount of taxes you owe, rather than reducing just your taxable income, according to the About.Com Web site, owned by the New York Times Co. The hybridcars.about.com site has a link to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's estimates for the tax credits. More information on gas mileage can be found online at many Web sites, including www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best/bestworstNF.shtml and www.consumerreports.org (the April issue of Consumer Reports, available at the Bozeman Public Library, carries more mileage information on dozens of new and used cars).

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com 

 

 


6) Influence of Time-Varying Magnetic Field on the Release of Neurotransmitters in Raphe Nuclei of Rats I

 

Jie Zhang , Xuemin Wang , Mingshi Wang

 

Corresponding information: zhang132@umn.edu; Mayo Clinic Rochester


Abstract: A specially designed time-varying magnetic field was developed to treat insomnia. Clinical results showed that this method could shorten the time to go to sleep and prolong the sleep duration. However, the mechanism of this method is still not well understood. In this study, the effect of magnetic stimulation on the release of serotonin (5-HT), noradrenaline (NE), dopamine (DA) in raphe nuclei of rats, which are known to play an important role in the sleep-wake regulation, was investigated. It was shown that there was a significant difference in the release of serotonin between control group and experimental group (p<0.01). The release of serotonin of the experimental group increased significantly. No obvious release changes of NE and DA are found (p>0.05). The results indicate that one possible mechanism of inducing sleep using specially designed magnetic field is to change the release of sleep-related neurotransmitters.


Keywords: Functional Electrical Stimulation

 

Presented at: 

 

The 27th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society was held in Shanghai, China, on September 1-4, 2005 with a focus on Innovations through Biomolecules and Biosystems.  This conference offered an opportunity to gather researchers, educators and developers from academic fields and industries worldwide to share their research results and exchange ideas covering all the areas of biomedical engineering. 

 

Thanks to Norman Kettner, DC, Radiology Department Head at Logan College of Chiropractic for sending www.bodyfields.com the above abstract. 

 

For more information:

 

http://www.ieee.org/services/join/societies/society15.html 


7) Soil May Spoil UK’s Climate Efforts

John Pickrell, Dublin, New Scientist, 18:45 07 September 2005 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7964

 

Unexpectedly vast quantities of carbon released from British soils since 1978 may be critically reducing their effectiveness as carbon sinks, claims a rigorous new survey. The phenomenon effectively cancels out the UK's recent successes in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the finding could have wider global implications.

It suggests that so-called terrestrial sinks across the planet are mopping up much less carbon than predicted, on balance, and so the planet may warm at an even faster rate than expected. Most climate models assume that forests and soils absorb about 25% of the greenhouse gases humans produce.

"The buffering effect of soils mopping up emissions is not as strong as we expected," says study author Guy Kirk of the UK's National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University. "The scary thing is that the amount of time that we have to do something about climate change is now smaller."

Soils are a vitally important sink for carbon dioxide – twice as much carbon is wrapped up in soils as in Earth's vegetation or atmosphere. It is estimated that they store 300 times the amount of carbon dioxide now released annually by burning fossil fuels.

Kyoto cancelled out

Kirk and colleagues surveyed soil at 6000 sites, spaced 5 kilometres apart, across England and Wales between 1978 and 2003.

They found that average carbon content of the soils had dropped at an average rate of 0.6% per year, or around 4 million tonnes annually. Extrapolating the results across the UK suggests that 13 million tonnes of carbon could have been lost per year. "These are really big numbers," says Kirk.

The calculated carbon lost by UK soil each year since 1978 is equivalent to 8% of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 1990. And it is more than the entire reduction in emissions the UK has achieved between 1990 and 2002 as part of its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol – 12.7 million tonnes annually.

The overall carbon loss was consistent across environments as varied as grasslands, bogs, arable fields and woodland, suggesting the change is largely due to warming and not changes in land use. The average temperature across England and Wales has increased by 0.5°C over the survey period.

Feedback loop

Up to one-tenth of the missing carbon may have leached into ground water, but Kirk says the majority is likely to have been lost as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is likely to be due to plant matter and organic material decomposing at a faster rate as temperatures rise.

More worryingly, soil sinks are predicted to release their carbon at an even faster rate as temperatures increase, giving rise to a feedback loop.

Models had predicted that the rate of carbon released from terrestrial sinks would eventually outpace the rate of absorption of carbon dioxide, says Kirk, but it was thought this would not happen for another 10 to 50 years. "We've shown that it's happening rather faster than that."

"These losses… completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing CO2 emissions, putting the United Kingdom's success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light," write E Detlef Schulze and Annette Freibauer of the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, in a commentary accompanying the study, in Nature.

European drought

"The scientific and political implications of the new findings are considerable," they add, and are "the first hint that regional climate variation may be contributing to a surprisingly large release of CO2 from soils to the atmosphere."

Much smaller surveys have hinted that carbon may be being lost from soil – in China and Finland, for example – but this had previously been attributed to changes in land use.

Just last month another study warned that this summer's European drought could unleash large amounts of CO2 from warm soils into the atmosphere.

Kirk also presented his group's findings on Wednesday at the BA Festival of Science in Dublin, Ireland.

Journal reference

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8) Tabletop fusion

Excerpt from "The List" by Chappell Brown, EE Times, 8/8/2005, http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600232


The latest news in the field of fusion research is the decision by the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Consortium to conduct its latest experiment in Cadarache, France. And what an experiment it will be: With up-front construction costs of $5 billion, the facility is expected to be in service for 30 years, and the initial experiment may require an additional $5 billion. But even if successful, it is only an experiment. The ITER tokamak (toroidal magnetic-field generator) will never become a power plant.

Purdue University physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan can only dream about such largesse. He has been involved in a number of tabletop experiments with a special chemical solution of deuterated acetone, stimulated with ultrasound, that he says have revealed unmistakable signs of hydrogen fusion. The results of the sonofusion experiments have passed peer review in major journals and have been independently confirmed by other groups. And Taleyarkhan is convinced that an experiment to scale up the system will result in the elusive goal of energy break-even. But so far he hasn't been able to get the funding to do it.

"We are not looking for billions of dollars up front, only for a chance," he said, explaining the engineering problems his experiment will have to overcome. "We have been doing some small preliminary scaling experiments, but you end up in a Catch-22 where you really need to directly tackle some difficult engineering problems."

In one respect, Taleyarkhan is more afraid of success than failure: A scaled-up version of his current apparatus, if it works as predicted by computer simulation, could deliver a lethal dose of neutrons. Consequently, before he can run the experiment, a fail-safe facility with adequate protection against radiation must be built.

"You can change parameters such as the temperature of the working fluid or the drive amplitude with which you are forcing the deuterated bubbles down to the nanometer scale from a size of thousands of microns," he explained. "You find that with a small increase in the drive amplitude, from 150 pounds per square inch to around 350 psi, the rate of reaction jumps by four or five orders of magnitude. "

But apart from the practical matter of energy generation, the experimental approach reveals an engineering principle that could have many applications. "The idea of using simple mechanical energy to initiate and control nuclear-level forces, the very workings of the universe — that is exciting in itself," Taleyarkhan said. "Immediate applications of the technology could produce neutrons or gamma rays for radiography or explosives detection. And then there is the ultimate that we are all striving for and hoping for, and that is to resolve the energy crisis."

Must-do research projects

1. The challenge: Tabletop fusion http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2005/050712.Xu.fusion.html
Project: Scale up previous sonofusion experiments to higher pressures; demonstrate energy break-even
Principal investigator: Rusi Taleyarkhan, Purdue University, (765) 420-7537, rusi@ecn.purdue.edu 

Payoff: An unlimited source of clean energy

2. The challenge: Room-temperature superconductors
Project: Create artificial optical crystal lattices using high-intensity lasers to study electron behavior
Principal investigator: Richard Saam, Proteus Systems Inc.
Payoff: Across-the-board performance and power boost for electronic and electromechanical systems

3. The challenge: Design system for nanotechnology
Project: BioBricks, a DNA parts catalog and design system for biosynthesis
Principal investigator: Open development community coordinated by MIT's Randy Rettberg, BioBricks catalog director
Payoff: Self-reproducing molecular machines; engineered materials with any predetermined physical properties

4. The challenge: The ultimate supercomputer
Project:
PlanetLab, an overlay network that transforms the Internet into one large computer                
Principal investigator: Open design community administered by the PlanetLab Consortium (
www.planet-lab.org)
Payoff: The network is the computer

5. The challenge: Implement a globe-spanning digital network with infinite bandwidth and zero latency
Project: The Global Lambda Integrated Facility, a test bed for developing dense wavelength-division multiplexing optical networks and middleware that would unite high-performance computers and scientific instruments worldwide
Principal investigator: Open development community established by Kees Neggers of Surfnet and Cees de Laat of the University of Amsterdam (
www.glif.is)
Payoff:
Construction work on the Information Superhighway finally wraps up; could spark a new era of scientific research and technical innovation


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