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PITTSBURGH, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. engineers have found a way to improve ethanol production, thereby helping ensure biofuels become a significant part of the U.S. energy supply. Carnegie Mellon University chemical engineers say they used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by more than 60 percent. The technology involves redesigning the distillation process by using a multicolumn system and a network for energy recovery that ultimately reduces the consumption of steam, a major energy component in the production of corn-based ethanol. "This new design reduces the manufacturing...

North Korea eyes computer software, military hardware First posted 08:36am (Mla time) April 16, 2006 By Agence France-Presse SEOUL – North Korea unveiled a new economic blueprint this week that sets the impoverished Stalinist state the target of becoming a high-technology powerhouse within two decades. Military spending remains the biggest budget item and a top priority for North Korea, one of the world's poorest countries that fields the fifth biggest army. Next comes agriculture and the goal of feeding its people, a target that North Korea has missed every year for more than a decade, during which it has relied...

Aug. 9, 2002, 10:45AM BONING UP ON HISTORY Skeletal remains may be 11,000 years old By TERRY KLIEWER Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle LAKE JACKSON -- The gummy clay of coastal Texas holds plenty of secrets, but it may have given up one of its oldest when routine excavation near here uncovered prehistoric human bones. alt="remains" vspace="2"> John Everett / Chronicle Archaeologist Robert d'Aigle unearthed bones three years ago in the San Bernard River National Wildlife Refuge in south Brazoria County. He may have found only the third human skeleton in North America that dates back at least 10,000 years. The...