Whiskey Woman When Patel's husband traveled abroad for work, he'd bring back more whiskeys for her to try.
looking for a non-food feedstock to produce fuel for jets and automobiles. In the Pacific Northwest, forest biofuel has been touted as a potential job creator,
Former NASA, Apple engineers unveil $11, 000 coffee makerah...what great lengths we wouldn't go through for the perfect cup of joe.
Born out of a collaborative effort of former NASA, Apple and BMW engineers the $11, 000 Blossom One Limited features the kind of high-tech precision that's sure to appease the taste buds of even the most discriminate of coffee snobs.
Car runs on coffee smashes speed record Users can program the Blossom One Limited with presets for various flavors of coffee.
An electric airplane for only $34, 000 Flyboard jetpack lets you perform dolphin aerial tricks video Futuristic motor home is ultra luxurious,
World s largest underwater hotel More smart home ideas: Next big thing: ââ Ëoesee through HDTVS Smart toilet remembers to put seat down,
Friends of Earth rains on Lufthansa biofuel paradefriends of the Earth today condemned Lufthansa s use of biofuels on commercial flights as greenwashing that makes an environmentally destructive practice appear eco-friendly.
Lufthansa is painting itself green with biofuels ââ oe but these flights are anything
but environmentally friendly, said Robbie Blake, biofuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. Biofuels exacerbate poverty and hunger,
He issued his statement prior to the scheduled 11:15 a m. take off of Lufthansa flight LH013 from Hamburg-to-Frankfurt.
Lufthansa plans to use the fuel for 6 months on 8 daily trips between the two cities, for a total of 1200 flights.
Likewise, KLM-Air france plans to fly 200 regular flights between Amsterdam and Paris using biofuels in September.
Yesterday, Finnair announced that it plans to test biofuels on at least 3 passenger flights between Helsinki and Amsterdam.
Airlines say biofuels can shrink the industry s carbon footprint because they do not emit CO2 the way conventional hydrocarbon jet fuels ââ oetypically kerosene-do.
Lufthansa says the 1200 flights will save 1500 tons o CO2. But Foe points out that jet biofuels can actually increase carbon emissions
With partial funding from the German government, Lufthansa has purchased 800 tons of blend from Finland s Neste Oil for the 6-month, â 6. 6 million biofuel program.
Foe claims that the jatropha in Neste s Lufthansa mix comes from Mozambique, and that it signals a land grab there and in other African countries.
Foe biofuel campaigner Kenneth Richter added that airlines overstate the environmental friendliness of jatropha. Although the crop can grow on degraded soil
By one estimate, jatropha would use up the equivalent of 35%of Germany s arable land to meet Lufthansa s 2025 biofuel target, Foe noted.
Lufthansa passenger flights taking off Airbus and Europe map jet biofuel goal Will the real biofuel Lindbergh please stand up
While most of us have thought at least about curtailing the fuel use of cars, we ignore global warming consequences
and that doesn t even include personal travel. Although the study examines the UK, its general premise almost certainly describes a pattern in the rest of the world:
-I ride the designated quiet cars on British trains because I can t stand the tinny sound that leaks out of the ghastly things (go ahead
In rail, it's the locomotive itself, it's switching devices, it's diagnostics. I liken it to rail--we make the switches, not the rails or railroad ties.
Our aircraft engines plant in Cincinnati. A healthcare facility in Europe. Now we have a cool in-house system where we track
I'm traveling around the world. The outer circle where I spend a lot of time is with our customers.
The researchers took a road trip in a red Ford explorer to scale most of the state,
We traveled over 3, 000 miles to complete the sampling, University of Arkansas graduate school Meredith Schafer said in a statement.
The researchers found the weed growing in gas stations, cemeteries, ball parks, and along roads. It is unclear of
if this is a problem, but some argue that it's impossible to stop gene pollution from happening.
A second copy of ACR3 allows the ladder brake fern to safely transport arsenic from its roots to its fronds,
and are greater than those of all  cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains worldwide.
The program is in testing right now, but Google. org plans to make it available within the year,
and even a totally necessary bike-dry for bicycle commuters to place their soggy bikes to dry during the work day
a midsize produce delivery company that uses about 65 trucks to deliver fruits and vegetables to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
and application in 20 trucks before deploying them to the entire 65-vehicle fleet a few months later.
The drivers were briefed in advance on what the systems were prolonged tracking, specifically idling (which is a waste of gas)
(even though the drivers are, in essence, customer service representatives and are encouraged to talk to clients, there is a limit to chitchat).
If every truck makes six to 10 stops per day and each idling period is 10 minutes, on average,
By bringing the implications of excessive idling to drivers'attention, Indianapolis Fruit was able to reduce fuel costs by an average of 8 percent to 9 percent per vehicle,
Gilbert said. Prolonged delivery times: The Navman Wireless technology quickly helped reduce the amount of time that drivers spent offloading their trucks at each stop.
Across the fleet, average delivery times were reduced about 25 percent, Gilbert said. Route optimization: Indianapolis Fruit was able to study each of its routes more closely
Gilbert said that many drivers were willing to explore new areas because they had the comfort of knowing where they were going.
It takes from 20 to 30 minutes for Navman Wireless to install its technology in each vehicle,
Turning algae into oil the NASA way Growing the next'green'fuel Algae could be jet fuel of the future The algae bloom of alternative energy The Algaeus algae-fueled Prius hits
Those pilots will be combined and expanded with the objective of breaking ground on a commercial scale project by 2016.
(though you wouldn't know it from the massive shower head in my hotel!),and parks and gardens are aiming to slash their water consumption in the coming years.
and treat it accordingly--washing down their cars on a daily basis (which explains why I never saw a dirty car in that decidedly dusty environment),
hosing down outside spaces, maintaining lush gardens, and so on. Indeed, energy in general is too cheap in Abu dhabi at about $1. 80 for a gallon of gasoline
after a long process of cultural change, even the 16 percent of the UAE's crude oil production that is consumed internally--nearly half a million barrels per day--might be reduced as more electric vehicles,
take to the roads. It might not take much more than Sheikh Mohammed letting his people see him rolling around downtown in a snazzy,
and deficient storage, transportation and agricultural practices. Between 1. 2 billion and 2 billion metric tons of food-out of the 4 billion produced annually-never reaches a human stomach,
The reasons for this situation range from poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage infrastructure through to supermarkets demanding cosmetically perfect foodstuffs
Fortunately, a friend loaned Ned an airplane. Unfortunately, the motor exploded. Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane.
Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute. And so on. Such it is with high oil prices.
I wrote that drivers in the U s. will be forced to simply hand over the keys to new drivers in developing countries as competition for oil increases.
Bus and train ridership increased by 2. 3 percent in 2011 over 2010 according to new data from the American Public Transportation Association, reaching one of the highest levels America has seen since 1957, according to the Washington post.
Subway ridership was up 3. 3 percent nationwide. Intercity transportation is also moving away from air and rail and toward buses, according to research by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at Depaul University in Chicago.
Bus service between cities has been growing steadily since 2006, and was the only form of intercity transportation to grow appreciably in 2011.
Free wi-fi and power outlets, spacious seats, online ticketing, and convenient pickup locations have increased the appeal of
what was disparaged once a mode of travel, even as air travel has become less convenient and more unpleasant.
Transit-hub based bus service enjoyed 6 percent growth in 2010, and 7. 1 percent growth in 2011.
Traffic on curbside operators, which offer pickup at various locations aside from transit hubs, grew a whopping 32.1 percent in 2011.
Big curbside operators Boltbus and Megabus posted the greatest growth, and appear to have reached now profitability.
Megabus boasts 15 million cumulative passengers since it began operations in 2006. Boltbus, which opened in 2008 to some fanfare for its gimmick of selling one seat on each bus at random for just one dollar
is a comfortable and very cheap way to get between major cities in the Northeast.
For example, one can book a trip from Boston to New york on Boltbus just two days in advance for between $17 and $25;
on an airline, tickets for the same trip start at $360. Smaller operators offering more deluxe accommodations, such as Limoliner, Lux Bus America and New york Shuttle also expanded service in 2011.
Intercity bus service growth rates, 1960-2011. Source: Â Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development The enthusiasm for comfortable and relatively low-cost bus service contrasts markedly with air and rail service.
Scheduled airline departures shrank slightly in 2011 while passenger seat-miles increased a modest 1. 5 percent.
Rail passenger seat-miles rose just 1. 2 percent but train-miles fell by 1. 1 percent.
Estimated growth in passenger ridership, 2010-2011. Source: Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development Interestingly, as I detailed in January (The revolution will be bottom-up),
this is one of the many transformations under way in America which are forced by high oil prices but
which aren't easily detected in official data. The researchers observe: Accurate passenger traffic statistics are not available for the intercity bus sector due to the fact that no federal government agency compiles
and audits such statistics, as is done for intercity rail and airplane travel. Airlines As ever, high oil prices hurt the airlines most of All the last time global oil prices were this high was in the first half of 2008,
when I detailed the carnage in the airline sector. By October of that year, when I heard airline industry expert Michael Boyd explain at an energy conference that every airline in the world is obsolete at $100 a barrel,
30 small carriers had gone bust. Now we are seeing the next tranche of air carriers being wiped out by intolerably high fuel prices.
Southwest Airlines, one of the few carriers who hedged their oil price risks properly in 2008
and avoided heavy losses, said yesterday that it will not earn a profit in the first quarter of this year.
But at today's oil prices, merely being unprofitable is doing very well indeed. Air france-KLM reported a $1 billion loss for 2011,
saying that it had not been able to offset the rising cost of jet fuel. Australia's Qantas Airways reported last month that high fuel costs had halved its profit in the first half of 2011
and that it would cut 500 jobs in a bid to save the company. Airasia X announced this week that it is suspending service to New zealand due to unprofitability,
as prices have increased more than 30 percent since it launched the route. Also this week, Israel's El al airlines announced higher fuel surcharges, eliminated its service to Brazil
and iced its plan to expand service to the U s. Of the six major airlines in India,
only one is currently profitable, and the Indian airline industry as a whole is expected to realize a $2. 5 to $3 billion loss for the 2011 fiscal year.
Worst of all South carolina-based public charter airline Direct Air suspended its operations yesterday without notice
when it ran out of money to pay for fuel, stranding its customers without offering them alternative arrangements.
Unfortunately, there is little that the airlines can do to accommodate an era of permanently higher fuel prices, other than raising their own prices accordingly.
Of necessity this will mean a shrinking industry and a gradual transition to buses and long-distance rail for overland transport,
and an eventual return to seaborne transport for economy-class international travel. Looking 20 to 30 years into the future
when the global supply of oil will be 30 percent or more lower than it is today,
we can easily imagine air travel returning to its roots as a mode of travel that only the wealthy can afford.
Indeed, Simon Fraser University urban studies professor Anthony Perl, the author of the 2008 book Transport Revolutions, predicts that no more than 25 airports will be functional worldwide by 2025.
Trucking and delivery services Next to airlines, long-haul trucking companies are arguably the most vulnerable to fuel price shocks.
With a single diesel fill up costing up to $900 and very thin profit margins, most have no choice
but to pass along their increased costs to customers. There's no way that the trucking industry can absorb fuel costs
it can't happen, trucking company owner Jim Ganduglia told ABC News. Where he operates in Fresno, California,
diesel is running from $4. 25 to $4. 35 a gallon this week. So there's a fuel surcharge
and without that fuel surcharge we'd all be out of business. Nowhere is the cost of trucking more evident to consumers than at the grocery store.
Fresh produce and other perishables must be shipped promptly no matter what fuel prices are. Grocers, who also operate on razor-thin margins, must raise their rates in turn.
Local drivers for repair services, florists, cleaning services, pizza shops, mobile food businesses, and so on are feeling the pinch even more.
Operators of small fleets, like Phoenix-based HVAC repair shop George Brazil Services, try to maximize their fuel efficiency by switching to more efficient vehicles
so drivers don't have to travel as far on each call. With up to 2, 000 house calls per week
using GPS devices to track their drivers on a minute-by-minute basis . But such tools are generally beyond the reach of small businesses.
There's a hungry segment of small business owners who could really benefit from real-time guidance on avoiding slow roads,
Optimizing the behavior of drivers is another fuel-reduction strategy advocated by companies like Dubai-based Dynamic Technical Training.
By training drivers to shift strategically and avoid hard acceleration or hard braking, they have shown that fleet operators of 100 vehicles can save $31, 500 annually in fuel costs.
Larger fleets, in the 1200-vehicle range, could save $1. 2 million per year. For national delivery services like UPS who have optimized already their drivers'habits
and engaged in a long campaign to upgrade the fuel economy of their fleets, the main recourse is to simply keep raising their fuel surcharges.
One year ago, the surcharge was 5. 5 percent. Now it's 7. 5 percent,
mostly from diesel used to power farm equipment and big rigs, and from natural gas used to make fertilizers.
and have elevated transportation costs to a prime consideration. One analyst who has predicted this for many years is former CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin
Soaring transport costs suddenly change the entire economics of importing everything from cheap labour markets half way around the world,
He found that every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of crude added 4 cents per mile to transportation rates (against a $75 a barrel baseline price
German airports use honeybees to sniff out air quality
Hong kong cracks down on trade in baby formulamilk formula is sold alongside Chinese herbs. HONG KONG--Hong kong parents have been contending with a frustrating shortage of infant milk formula.
At the Hong kong district of Sheung Shui, near the border, mainland Chinese line up to the train station that will take them back into China
Mainland Chinese who live near the border are permitted to enter Hong kong, a semiautonomous region of China with separate legal and political systems, on multiple-entry tourist visas,
pushing up prices on basic necessities and creating the crowded lines at places like the Sheung Shui train station.
There is also a call for the abolishment of multiple-entry tourist visas. Â Without these permits, this kind of large-scale gray-goods trading of Hong kong s products probably could not exist.
Another 15 minutes by bus and all around are farms. But this isn t mass-scale agricultural land that disappears into the horizon.
while nearby, a young couple, Wing and Eddie, took care of a small section of land that they rented for US$20 per month.
and runoff spills into ground floors and down subway stairs. Other days, turning on the faucet yields only the gurgle and hiccup of pipes that have run dry as the city periodically shuts off water to one or another neighborhood.
Next-generation biofuels are viewed often as a transportation fuel panacea. A magic elixir that will wean the U s. off of foreign oil without sending the economy into the dark ages.
San francisco cable cars are not the only mobile national monument(#23. They are real facts, and we have teams here that fact-check everything, Snapple's vice president of marketing,
is going on year 12 in Portland without a car and says Portland, Ore.,is certainly a model for sustainability,
Their bike network is unparalleled in the country. It s an amazing infrastructure. You can see their commitment to getting people to where they need to go without the automobile.
They re doing really well. They ve also incorporated sustainability into every aspect of people's lives, down to chickens and beehives in people's backyards.
We ve seen the strongest movements around transportation. The Portland region--Cumberland County â has one of the highest rates of single-occupancy vehicle use.
So there s a movement to get the region to grow its public transit network. In 2008 there was part of a study the Department of transportation did to widen 295 through the peninsula,
which borders on downtown. There was a lot of protest against that. Eventually that activism led to a conversation that turned into the expansion of the Downeaster Amtrak service from Portland to Brunswick.
We got some stimulus funds to upgrade the rail. The activism we saw from the public was critical in that movement.
We have one of the best-rated Amtrak systems in country. It s one of the only Amtrak services where you can get Wifi and lobster rolls.
The numbers this has grown by have exceeded expectations. Did 295 ever expand? No, 295 still hasn t been widened.
Since then, the conversations have been on which alternatives we re doing to expand on â express bus service or commuter rail.
What else is happening in Portland? We re going to be looking to expand our green building codes.
Do you have a bike share program, or bike lanes? We ve been expanding our network with bike lanes.
We have a new trail that was a rail line. Portland Trails was one of the lead groups.
The Bayside trail goes through what was once an industrial neighborhood, where we re developing a mixed use district.
We haven t really gotten all that much into bike share. We have some private companies that rent out bicycles.
We have a car share program through U Car Share. Do people bike year-round in the snow?
Yep, I m one of them. I ve been car-free for most of the time
I ve been in Portland the last 12 years. I haul everything around in a trailer behind my bike.
What are your personal green goals? I ve been fixing up an 1840s house for the last 10 years,
and my goal is to make this house as energy efficient as possible. One of the goals I had was to get the house off heating fuel (it was an old cast iron steam system with an oil burner,
How to feed an astronaut: a talk with NASA's space food managerwhile it's not exactly five-star cuisine,
astronauts survive on more than the freeze-dried space food found in museum gift shops. To get a look inside NASA's kitchen,
I spoke last week with Michele Perchonok, Shuttle Food System manager at Johnson Space center. How has evolved astronaut food over the years?
In the beginning, we didn't even know if people could swallow in microgravity. We didn't know how much was due to the muscles contracting
and how much was due to gravity. The good news is they can eat and digest their food in microgravity.
Early astronaut food was basically tubes and cubes: pureed applesauce in a toothpaste tube or compressed cubes of sandwiches or breads or desserts.
The astronauts said it tasted OK, but it just wasn't satisfying because it wasn't close to
what they were used to. We started developing some products or taking commercial products that were appropriate
About the year 2000 when we were starting to be on International Space station up to six months,
When we started on International Space station the crew was on a four-day menu cycle.
Half the food on International Space station is U s. food and half is Russian food. We're now up to a 16-day menu cycle.
In addition, it's very difficult to transfer food from Point A to Point B. The astronauts eat their food within the food package most of the time.
We want the astronauts to be able to eat out of the food package with utensils.
If they're on International Space station there's a little suction where the garbage goes. The astronauts can sit over that,
so the crumbs will go right into the suction. All of our beverages are formulated pre. If you drink your coffee with cream and sugar,
--even though it's a wonderful and exciting opportunity--astronauts are separated from family and friends. You may crave comfort foods you grew up with,
Do astronauts determine their own menus? We have approximately 180 items on our food list.
They do have choices on shuttle. Do you want to develop your own menu? Do you want to take a menu and change a few items?
On International Space station, they get'preference bonus containers, 'which are items they like on the official food list
Many crews will host a special meal with the International Space station crew. For example, the crew that's hopefully going up in the beginning of December is hosting a meal
What are some of the most popular food items for astronauts? Shrimp cocktail is very popular.
or they forget to transfer it over for International Space station, it could get soft before it's ready.
I'm working with the astronauts. I'm developing food for Mars. It makes the job very special.
astronauts exploring Mars will build hydroponic growth labs where vegetables can be grown. These crops will provide the crew with added nutrition and variety./
/Courtesy of NASA Image, bottom: Michele Perchonok
How to improve crop yields while reducing climate changewith a one-two punch aimed at reducing climate change and improving crop yields worldwide, the for-profit company re:
They plan to try building a two-compartment cell, with a cathode on one side and an anode on the other--to collect the hydrogen, Discovery News reported.
30-story hotel built in just 15 days Volkswagen car goes 1, 626 miles on a tank of gas China s new bullet train is world s fastest, smashes record Video:
sets world record video Is this 400-mile electric car battery for real
Icon Carol Bartz, former CEO, Autodesk and Yahoo! Carol Bartz isn't afraid to get her hands dirty.
Every evening trucks carrying half-eaten cabbage, decomposing Kung Pao Chicken, and other food discarded in restaurants
a  trade show in Buenos aires. Module at Expo Logistik-a show Designing modular and disaster relief housing is very trendy these days, especially in the wake of Katrina and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.
and easy to transport, says Alter, 35. Half-folded military module So, the friends thought,
what if you designed modular boxes with a hinge halfway up the wall, so they could be collapsed like accordions and stacked on the back of a pickup truck?
With one truck, you can carry six or seven of these in the space of one container,
The materials and construction of the Modularflex modules is fairly standard. As is common in other modular units
Modularflex's modules are made of insulated thermal panels much like the walls of a supermarket cold storage room.
the basic module comes with electrical wiring and LED lighting. But the folding nature of the modules makes them unique,
says Don Carlson, who has owned the industry trade journal Automated Builder Magazine since 1974. Because the units are foldable, the 1,
000-pound modules can be put into place with a forklift instead of a crane. Then, by pushing
or three people can have a module up in under half an hour. I've never heard of any unit you could build that quick
Here in Argentina, train transport is not that common. Transportation is done with trucks, which has high financial and ecological costs.
What's different about us, besides being foldable, is that someone, with one truck, can take more than one,
Alter says. Carrizo and Alter Carrizo gives the example of a mining company in Argentina that last year transported ten containers from Buenos aires to a mining camp in San juan, near the Chilean border.
Each truck moved one container and cost the company 20,000 pesos (about $4, 000), for a total transport bill of 200,000 pesos.
because with two trucks you take them all, he says. The use of readily available materials is also typically Argentine,
A basic 80-square-foot Modularflex module costs 38,000 pesos (about $7, 600 at the current exchange rate
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