Free Republic

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, green high-tech venture VioletTM Fuel Cell SticksTM www.violetfuelcellsticks.com announces it has achieved an extremely high, 15KW/Liter cell density with their Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) StickTM. Previous commercial fuel cells, including both SOFCs and PEMs, have struggled to meet a target of 2KW/Liter; and previous advanced concepts have struggled to achieve 4KW/Liter. The VioletTM StickTM has overcome the most significant hurdles facing fuel cells, and it resolves the technical limitations of existing technologies, such as sealing, cracking and manifolding problems, and poor volumetric density. StickTM technology, created by VioletTM Fuel Cell SticksTM, offers a fundamental change to...

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers. "It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development." The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium...

POP legend Sir Elton John wants the internet CLOSED DOWN. Never one to keep his opinions to himself, the Rocket Man has waded into cyberspace with all guns blazing. He claims it is destroying good music, saying: “The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. “Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. “It’s just a means to an end. “We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to...

A team of Korean researchers has developed a cutting-edge solar cell that might help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The discovery could make Korea a leader in the alternative energy industry as the research team plans to double the cell's efficiency and commercialize the technology by 2012. The team's leader, Lee Kwang-hee of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, said on Thursday, "Together with Prof. Alan Heeger at the University of California Santa Barbara, we have developed a plastic solar cell with 6.5 percent efficiency. That level of efficiency is sufficiently high for commercial products." The discovery was...

A woman's formal complaint – filed with the city of Denver – alleges she was hurt and humiliated by instructions from an emergency room doctor that she should not get drunk and hurt herself. The complaint stemmed from an incident that developed when a 34-year-old mother of two, Karin Howe of Littleton, was riding in a rickshaw in Denver's trendy Lower Downtown district, and stood up and fell back onto a sidewalk, where she hit her head and was knocked out, according to a report by CBS Channel 4 television. She had been partying with friends, and appeared to have...

LESBIANS are twice as likely as heterosexual women to be overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk for obesity-related health problems and death, US researchers said. The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health,

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admits the Bush administration made mistakes regarding the Iraq war, she says "they had nothing to do with 'dysfunction' in the interagency process she ran. She even disputes, astonishingly, Colin Powell's claim that he held less sway with Bush than Rumsfeld did. 'I've heard that, and I'd really like to know what he means. Colin Powell had as much access as anyone,' Rice insists 'Colin used to come have dinner with the president. I don't think Don ever did that'." Rice's comments are in an upcoming biography entitled, "Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and...

Michael Savage, the nation's third-most listened to radio talk-show host, says he may leave his top rated show to make a bid for the GOP nomination for president.

Breakthroughs in battery technology could make 2007 the year that electric cars finally come into their own. The company claims that their battery shows a cycle life in excess of 20,000 charges and discharges while still retaining 85 per cent of its capacity to store energy. Altairnano's data show that their battery has a power density of 4,000 w/kg and the ability to safely operate from -50° C to 75° C. Each credit is worth US$5,000 (about AU$6,500), so a type 3 vehicle is worth US$200,000 (about AU$260,000) in California. Carmakers either have to build their own type 3 vehicles...

I have a friend at church who has seemed a little distant for a couple of months. Last week he approached my brother and I with a DVD he wanted us to see. It is the WTC conspiracy. He has fallen for it and thinks that Bush and the Jews brought down the towers. This is a guy that I feel very bad for him. Honestly, a couple of months ago he was a very normal guy, now he seems like a paranoid schizophrenic. He may be too far gone but he has sucked his five sons into this delusion,...

This just in: Self imposed news blackout from Lebenon. Nothing to follow.

The high cost of crude oil has many people looking for new sources of energy -- and taking a second look at some old ideas. Oil shale is an idea that was tested a generation ago, then abandoned when the price of crude oil plunged. Now, a self-taught inventor is once again eyeing the vast shale deposits of the Rocky Mountains. Byron Merrell steers his Chevy pickup along Highway 40 in eastern Utah, past the fiberglass dinosaurs that welcome tourists from the nearby national monument. Just outside the city of Vernal, he turns onto the "Bonanza Highway." The highway is...

Scientists from the University of Cornell have discovered a massive amount of oil of the coast of Louisiana.

The MYT™ (Massive Yet Tiny) Engine, is a breakthrough of immense proportions that will spawn the next industrial revolution and will rocket the internal combustion engine into the next millennium. Please spread the word. The MYT™ Engine has the potential to replace all the existing internal combustion engines and jet engines. With 40 times higher power to weight ratio, low parts count, low maintenance, high mechanical efficienty, and low pollution, the MYT™ Engine will benefit airplane, big ship, 18 wheeler, SUV, passenger car, even down to carry on power generator applications. The MYT™ Engine as a pump/compressor also exceeds exisiting...

Digital Gas Advised by Oil Shale Partner That Department of Energy Laboratory Signed Agreements on Product Development and Intellectual Property NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 7, 2006--Digital Gas, Inc. (OTC Pink Sheets:DIGG) announced today that its oil shale technology development partner has concluded negotiations with an operator of a major U.S. Department of Energy laboratory for further development of the fuel cell system the two companies will seek to commercialize. Exclusive product development and intellectual property agreements were signed by the operator of the laboratory. After an extensive due diligence process, in which numerous fuel cell and other research laboratories were interviewed...

Instead of making hydrogen and trying to store it, why not make it where you need it, right in the car. Converting biomass to ethanol requires very expensive plants limiting the number of plants and requiring expensive transportation of the substrate. Ethanol production also loses energy in the conversion process. I'm not talking about net energy production just comparing substrate with product. Stover (corn stalks after the harvest), Switch grass, sawdust, ect. can be compressed into fuel pellets very effeciently. The machinery is inexpesive and can be scaled to needed outputs very efficiently. You could make pellets where the waste...

I am disgusted as I read the news. We buy oil from petty tyrants. South American thugs bad-talk us and threaten to shut off the tap. Middle-East royalty, two generations from living in mud huts fund jihadists who want to cut off our heads. We compete with communist slave-workers for oil driving up the prices. We may or may not be running out of the stuff creating the real possibility that we are going have to find a replacement anyway. Honestly, our oil economy is going to hurt us at some point. I don’t know if it will be now...

Pastors decry 'scare tactics' A group of pastors is lashing out at the Mainstream Coalition over its plan to monitor Johnson County church services for potentially improper political activity.