Free Republic

The danger of new 'green' light bulbsby Abbie Burke Posted: 11.04.2010 at 2:20 PM COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- They burn brighter, longer, and use less energy. But the squiggly looking light bulbs known as CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) light up using mercury, a potentially dangerous element. Switching out old light bulbs to the new CFLs is one of the easiest ways to go green. But what is done with the CFLs after they burn out is perhaps even more important for the environment. "You don't want that mercury ending up in the landfill, which could then end up getting...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Persistent exposure to light at night may lead to weight gain, even without changing physical activity or eating more food, according to new research in mice. Researchers found that mice exposed to a relatively dim light at night over eight weeks had a body mass gain that was about 50 percent more than other mice that lived in a standard light-dark cycle. "Although there were no differences in activity levels or daily consumption of food, the mice that lived with light at night were getting fatter than the others," said Laura Fonken, lead author of the study...

A color composite image of the June 3, 2010, Jupiter impact flash. Credit: Anthony Wesley observing from Broken Hill, Australia. In a paper published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a group of professional and amateur astronomers announced that Jupiter is getting hit surprisingly often by small asteroids, lighting up the giant planet's atmosphere with frequent fireballs. "Jupiter is a big gravitational vacuum cleaner," said co-author and JPL astronomer Glenn Orton. "It is clear now that relatively small objects left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago still hit Jupiter frequently." The impacts are...

Four from Panoramio (there are quite a few more; this place generates amazing pictures readily). click for full-size

The devil has blinded the minds of them that believe not lest the glorious light of the gospel should shine unto them (2Corinthians 4:4). And Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12). He came to put an end to the blindness. Have you ever been in your home during a storm and there was a big clap of thunder and a strike of lightning and suddenly the lights went out? Then what happened you started feeling your way around looking for a source of light. No matter how dark it is a little light causes darkness to flee....

After more than a century of popular sci-fi fantasies that feature deadly energy weapons, including War of the Worlds, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Star Trek and Star Wars, it looks like the ray gun has finally arrived in the real world. And even if the first ray guns out of the lab can barely fit on the bed of a 30-ton off-road truck rather than in a soldier’s palm, the novel, "speed-of-light" capabilities that lasers could bring to the battlefield has drawn the keen interest of the Pentagon brass, which spends about $400 million a year on directed-energy beam weapons....

A Chinese man has spent the majority of his life enjoying the taste of well-lit snack. According to "The Metro," 54-year-old Wang Xianjun has eaten more than 15-hundred lightbulbs since he was 12. Xianjun says broken glass is "crispy and delicious," adding that he developed a real love of lightbulbs when he discovered that they weren't causing his body any harm. Xianjun says he smashes each bulb into pieces before he eats it and always enjoys a glass of water with his meal. He adds, quote, "I only eat the bulb during breakfast, and each day no more than one...

After 72 hours of exposure to ambient light, strands of nanoparticles twisted and bunched together. Credit: Nicholas Kotov Light can twist matter, according to a new study that observed ribbons of nanoparticles twisting in response to light. Scientists knew matter can cause light to bend – prisms and glasses prove this easily enough. But the reverse phenomenon was not shown to occur until recently. The researchers assembled strings of nanoparticles, which are tiny clumps of matter on the scale of nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter). In a darkened lab, the scientists linked nanoparticles together into...

FRiends, I just learned yesterday that an old school friend of mine, Adam Light, from Tazewell, Virginia, in the Commonwealth's 9th District is running for the GOP nomination to take on notorious, double-dealing, smooth-talking liberal Congressman Rick Boucher. He is currently running against five other relatively weak GOP candidates, with the front-runner being a "good ol' boy," next-in-line professional GOP hack who doesn't even live in the district. Adam is a strong Conservative, a committed Constitutionalist, a Christian family man, and a hard-working land surveyor (primarily in the coal industry) by trade. Perhaps most importantly, he is one of us!...

I could be completely out of line here, but I’m just going to say it anyway. As Christians we really need to stop picking on each other. From politics to the public school system, it seems that everyone has an opinion about everyone else and we’re not afraid to share it with the world. Differences in doctrine and parenting alone can be enough to get us riled up fast. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and it seems like the older I get, the more often I need to pull over and get a rabies shot.

Air Force Office of Scientific Research and National Science Foundation-funded professor, Dr. Xiang Zhang has demonstrated at the University of California, Berkeley the world's smallest semiconductor laser, which may have applications to the Air Force in communications, computing and bio-hazard detection. The semiconductor, called a plasmon, can focus light the size of a single protein in a space that is smaller than half its wavelength while maintaining laser-like qualities that allow it to not dissipate over time. "Proposed almost seven years ago, researchers had been unable to demonstrate a working plasmonic laser until our experiment," said Zhang. "It is an...

She claims to be a traveling nurse. Audio at the link. UPDATE: Cleveland.com is claiming her true name is Barbara Brooks. And her real name is Barbara Brooks. Or so she told The Plain Dealer today after a series of phone interviews, e-mails and records checks involving Brooks/Light, a family member, licensing records and property information. The 51-year-old woman provided her address on Monday night to The Plain Dealer, and what she says is her real name in conversations today that followed checks of public records.

From – Mon Jan 25 06:42:56 2010 X-Account-Key: account11 X-UIDL: UID204928-1203640919 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-Mozilla-Keys: Return-path: Envelope-to: hotair@edmorrissey.com Delivery-date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:38:46 -0500 Received: from tosh-PC (host11-164-dynamic.59-82-r.retail.telecomitalia.it [82.59.164.11]) by (Postfix) with SMTP id DBC0C1E1C6AB Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:38:30 -0600 (CST) Received: from [82.59.164.11] by web335.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:22:20 GMT Message-Id: Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:22:20 -0400 From: “Ellie Light” User-Agent: Mozilla 2.0 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0

An interesting phenomenon has been occuring in various newspaper "Letters to the Editor" pages. A woman with the same name has had letters published in no fewer than 9 newspapers praising Obama while using various city and location residences. Now it's one thing if the person(s) name was something like John Brown, Steve Smith, Amy Jones or any other number of common name combination. However the name being used is Ellie Light. This may seem like much about nothing except for one small thing. The only Ellie Light that FReepers were able to locate by Lexis-Nexis or internet searches were...

The world which sat in darkness has seen a Great Light... Enjoy the song.

A mysterious spiral of light has appeared in northern Norway one day before President Obama arrives to give his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo. The spiral has baffled experts who do not believe it is related to the Aurora Borealis. Speculation that it is a rocket launched by the Russian Northern Fleet has been denied by Russian authorities. Similarly the Norwegian military has claimed no knowledge of any rocket launches in the area. There has been speculation that it may be some exotic weapon system, the opening of a space-time portal, or even UFO activity. Obama’s arrival in...

Upset about FirstEnergy's pricey, hand-delivered light bulbs? You ain't seen nothing yetBy Kevin OBrien October 08, 2009, 3:59AM There was a time when you and I could be trusted to change a light bulb. In those days, powerful people who made weighty decisions understood that if a light bulb burned out, even the dimmest of us common folk would know enough to remove it from its socket, choose a suitable replacement and install it. Apparently all of the weighty decisions have been made, because powerful people have now worked their way down to telling us what kind of light bulb...

LONDON (Reuters) – The amazing eyes of a giant shrimp living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef could hold the key to developing a new type of super high-quality DVD player, British scientists said on Sunday. Mantis shrimps, dubbed "thumb splitters" by divers because of their vicious claws, have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom. They can see in 12 primary colors, four times as many as humans, and can also detect different kinds of light polarization -- the direction of oscillation in light waves.

It could be the breakthrough that finally has consumers warming to the energy-saving light bulb. A version that brightens up instantly, costs just 88p a year to run and lasts up to 25 years has gone on sale in Britain for the first time. The only catch is that the new LED bulb will cost £30.

Increasing energy demands and concerns about global warming mean that the sun is an important inexhaustible and clean energy source. Dye sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) have proved to be a highly efficient and low-cost option for conversion of sunlight to energy. Ruthenium dye photosensitisers have given the highest power conversion efficiency in the past but they are not very environmentally friendly and supply is limited, explains Eric Diau at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Diau and his team took inspiration from nature by developing a dye based on porphyrin - a component of chlorophyll, which gives plants their green...