Inventors: Dish is 'user-friendly, user-friendly, so anybody can build it
A new type of solar energy collector concentrates the sun into a beam that could melt steel. Researchers say the device could revolutionize global energy production.
The prototype is a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish was made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000 to produce steam.
"This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence," said Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish's design — the rights to which he has signed over to a team of students at MIT.
To test the prototype this week, MIT mechanical engineering Spencer Ahrens put a plank of wood in the beam and generated an almost instant puff of smoke.
The thing does more than burn wood, of course. At the end of a 12-foot aluminum tube rising from the center of the dish is a black-painted coil of tubing that has water running through it. When the dish is pointing directly at the sun, the water in the coil flashes immediately into steam.
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David Chandler / LiveScience Team leader Spencer Ahrens fastens mirrors in place using wire and plastic washers. |
Wood, the inventor, said the students built the dish and improved on his design.
"They really have simplified this and made it user-friendly, so anybody can build it," he said.
Wood said small dishes work best because it requires much less support structure and costs less for a given amount of collection area.
"I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen," said MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class the project first took shape last fall. "And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25285030/
Nearly 40K job cuts announced as weakness persists
NEW YORK - This is the point in the recession where one round of job cuts leads to another.
Employers announced a total of nearly 40,000 job cuts Friday, almost all of them related to problems in other parts of the economy.
Circuit City Stores Inc. said it is liquidating, closing all its U.S. stores and cutting 30,000 jobs after being hobbled, in part, by declining consumer spending.
Rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. is eliminating 4,000 jobs worldwide as families and business travelers forgo trips. Insurer WellPoint Inc. is cutting about 1,500 jobs, with rising unemployment leading to fewer people with health insurance.
For the moment, every economic action seems to precipitate a negative reaction. Consumers made nervous by job cuts, tumbling home prices and swooning stocks aren't spending. That's hurt retailers and manufacturers, who have closed stores, cutting their employees' jobs or hours, which has made workers more nervous, so they spend less. And the spiral continues.
Even falling gas prices will have hurt some workers. Petroleum company ConocoPhillips said Friday it will cut about 1,300 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force.
"There does seem to be a painful cycle emerging," said Dana Saporta, U.S. economist at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort in New York. "Halting this cycle will require very aggressive fiscal and monetary policy."
Touring a factory in Ohio on Friday, President-elect Barack Obama promoted an $825 billion stimulus plan unveiled by House Democrats a day earlier.
"It's not too late to change course _ but only if we take dramatic action as soon as possible," Obama said. "The first job of my administration is to put people back to work and get our economy moving again."
With unemployment at a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December and about 11 million Americans out of work, many economists expect worse news to come. Some say the unemployment rate could be headed for 10 percent _ or higher _ by year's end.
Some companies laying off workers also are cutting pay and stopping contributions to retirement accounts. Those steps typically decrease spending and investing by their remaining employees.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced its third round of layoffs in a year Friday and will slash pay for top managers by 15 percent, other salaried workers by 10 percent and hourly workers' salaries by 5 percent.
In retail, Saks Inc. said Thursday it is slashing 1,100 jobs. The luxury retailer also eliminated merit raises in 2009, suspended matching contributions to its 401(k) plan for at least one year and suspended benefit accruals for workers who remain in the company's pension plan.
"Our financial performance is increasingly being challenged by some of the most difficult economic conditions our company has faced in its 84-year history," Steve Sadove, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "It is our expectation that the economic environment will remain extremely challenging through 2009, if not beyond."
Cuts this week have come in nearly every sector. In consumer products, mobile phone company Motorola Inc. said Wednesday it will eliminate 4,000 jobs, its second round of layoffs in four months, because of dropping sales. When the latest cuts are complete, Motorola's work force will have shrunk by 18 percent from its 2007 level.
Other companies announcing job cuts Friday include: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Honda Motor Co. and scientific instrument maker Varian Inc. Drug company Pfizer Inc. may cut as many as 2,400 sales jobs, according to a various media reports.
Also announcing layoffs this week were paper and plastics maker MeadWestvaco Corp., software company Autodesk Inc., Textron Inc.'s Cessna Aircraft Co., hard-disk drive maker Seagate Technology and engine maker Cummins Inc.
Even Internet search leader Google Inc., which seemed impervious to the economy's troubles, earlier this week said it will close three engineering offices and cut 100 recruiters.
"Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring," Laszlo Bock, a Google vice president, wrote in a blog posting announcing the layoffs.
The cycle will stop when housing prices stabilize and some economic confidence returns, said David Wyss, Standard & Poor's chief economist.
"People cut back on spending on things they don't need, but there are always thing they do need," Wyss said. "Eventually, they use up the last light bulb in the closet and they have to buy some more. It takes a while."
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Def ... ?id=388276
Citibank Top Donor to Obama Inauguration
Thursday, January 15, 2009 11:43 AM
By: Jim Meyers Article Font Size
Employees of Citibank, which received $45 billion in rescue funds in the federal bailout, have contributed the most to Barack Obama’s inauguration fund — at least $113,000 as of Wednesday.
And the bank is lobbying behind the scenes for more money from the second $350 billion installment of federal bailout funds, according to The New York Times.
Among the contributions from Citibank executives is $50,000 from Ray McGuire, the bank’s co-head of global investment banking, and $50,000 from Louis Susman, the recently retired vice chairman of Citigroup, the Huffington Post reports.
Susman also bundled $300,000 in donations for the inaugural committee, according to Politico.com.
Bundlers are fundraisers who collect checks from friends and associates and deliver them to a campaign or committee.
Citigroup employees also gave $586,000 to Obama during the 2008 election cycle.
“No doubt many donors give simply because they want to be part of history,” said Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for the non-partisan watchdog group Public Citizen.
“But donors and bundlers who represent special interests with business pending before the government and who dole out five-figure checks to the inaugural committee usually want a seat at the table with the new administration.”
Other bailed-out banks that have contributed to the inauguration fund include Goldman Sachs ($44,500) and JPMorgan Chase ($30,600).
Nearly 80 percent of the $35 million raised by Obama’s inaugural committee has come from just 211 bundlers, according to Public Citizen.
And as Newsmax reported last week, 378 donors had at that point contributed the maximum $50,000 allowed by Obama, raising almost 70 percent of the total.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/citi ... 71703.html
Obama team weighs government bank to ease crisis
Saturday January 17, 2009, 4:28 pm EST
By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The incoming Obama administration is considering setting up a government-run bank to acquire bad assets clogging the financial system, a person familiar with the Obama team's thinking said on Saturday.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp have been in talks about ways to ease a banking crisis that is once again deepening -- and a government-run "aggregator bank" is among the options.
Outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair both said on Friday a government bank was one of a number of ideas U.S. regulators had been discussing.
The source said advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Tuesday, were also considering the idea of an aggregator bank among a range of options that could be pursued.
David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama, told Reuters the new administration would have something to say about a fresh approach to the financial crisis in "the next few days."
"I'm not going to get into the structure of how we're going to approach the revamped financial rescue package," Axelrod said after speaking to a conference of mayors in Washington.
"What we have to do is approach this with a lot more transparency on the front end."
In addition to steps to bolster banks, Obama officials want to aggressively attack the underlying causes of the credit crisis: the sharp downturn in the U.S. housing market and the related deterioration in mortgage-related assets.
"There are a range of things we're going to have to do to stabilize the financial community and part of it is going to involve housing, and part of it is going to involve how we approach this issue generally," Axelrod said.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
In outlining the idea of an aggregator bank on Friday, Bair and Paulson said the government could use money from the Treasury-administered $700 billion financial rescue fund to capitalize a new institution that would be able to absorb toxic assets now weighing down bank balance sheets.
The hope would be that taking these bad assets off the hands of banks would allow the banks to attract badly needed private capital and renew lending, the original intention behind the bailout fund known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
"I think the key thing is assets purchases, and if you buy something, you have to put it somewhere," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
A surge in U.S. mortgage defaults led to a global credit crisis that has raged since the summer of 2007. Last week, Goldman Sachs estimated that losses worldwide could mount to $2 trillion, about double what has been realized so far.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Financial Times on Saturday that banks need to reveal the true size of their losses as a step toward moving past the crisis.
While officials have been discussing leveraging money from the U.S. bailout fund, it is not clear whether the fund is large enough for the task at hand.
"They may very well have to come back to ask (Congress) for TARP Two," Zandi said.
ACTIONS NEEDED
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday it was critical to bolster the banking system as a complement to the effort underway in Washington to enact a huge package of tax cuts and spending to lift the recession-mired economy.
"Fiscal actions are unlikely to promote a lasting recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further stabilize and strengthen the financial system," Bernanke said, laying out three possible ways to aid ailing banks.
The government could buy the assets, perhaps through so-called reverse auctions, as originally planned, but analysts said that is an extremely complicated endeavor and it no longer seems to have traction among policy-makers.
Bernanke also said the government could offer guarantees against losses on assets that would be ring-fenced but remain on bank balance sheets, a tactic the government has used to help Citigroup and Bank of America.
The third option would be to set up bad banks with government cash, an approach similar to the U.S. Resolution Trust Corp, which liquidated almost $400 billion in assets from more than 700 insolvent savings and loans institutions from 1989 to 1995.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-team-weighs-government-rb-14091318.html
China reports two new cases of bird flu, one dead
18 Jan 2009 16:30:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with state media saying a woman had died)
By Ian Ransom
BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - A woman in eastern China has died and a two year-old girl is critically ill in northern China after becoming infected with bird flu, state media said on Sunday.
The 27-year-old woman from Jinan, capital of China's Shandong province, died on Saturday after falling ill on Jan. 5, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department. It gave her surname as Zhang.
The two-year-old girl, surnamed Peng, was found ill on Jan. 7 in central Hunan Province and taken to a hospital in her home province of Shanxi on Jan. 11, Xinhua news agency said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department.
After not reporting a single human infection in almost a year, China has now confirmed three cases in two weeks.
Health authorities said earlier this month a woman infected with bird flu had died in Beijing after buying ducks at a market in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital, sparking emergency checks of local poultry markets.
Experts said the case was not unexpected as the virus is more active during the cooler months between October and March, but pointed to holes in surveillance of the virus in poultry.
China's Agriculture Ministry said last week it had found no bird flu cases among poultry in Beijing or other areas surrounding the city during checks after the woman's death.
The H5N1 virus remains largely a disease among birds but experts fear it could change into a form that is easily transmitted among humans, and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide.
With the world's biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of backyard birds, China is seen as critical in the fight to contain bird flu.
GIRL CRITICAL
The national disease prevention and control center on Sunday confirmed Zhang, the 27-year-old woman, had been infected with bird flu, Xinhua said, but provided no other details.
China's Health Ministry said in a statement on its website (www.moh.gov.cn) that authorities had confirmed on Saturday that the two-year-old girl had been infected with the virus.
The statement did not say how the girl had become infected. There have not been any reports of outbreaks of the virus among birds in Hunan since May 2007.
"Currently, the girl's condition is critical. Shanxi health departments are currently fighting to save her with the guidance of a team of health experts," the Health Ministry said.
"All people who have had close contact with her are under strict medical observation," it said. It added that the World Health Organisation (WHO), and health authorities in Hong Kong, Macau and some other countries had been notified.
Calls placed to health departments in Shanxi province went unanswered.
WHO said China's Health Ministry had notified them of the toddler's infection, but could not provide more details. "We are staying in close contact with the Health Ministry," a spokeswoman from WHO's China office told Reuters.
Since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has infected 391 people, killing 247 of them, according to WHO figures released in mid-December.
The toddler's infection brings China's total to 33 human bird flu cases, of which at least 22 people have died. (Additional reporting by Lu Jiansheng; editing by Myra MacDonald)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LI541582.htm
Venezuela's Chavez urges tear gas against protests
Sun Jan 18, 2009 2:19am GMT
CARACAS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered police on Saturday to use tear gas on anti-government protests that block roads, heating up a campaign for a referendum that could allow him to run for re-election.
Venezuelans will vote next month on a proposed change to the constitution that would allow Chavez, a foe of the United States, to seek re-election when his term ends in four years.
In 2007, voters rejected a package of political reforms that would have allowed him to run again for the top office.
Small groups of students in gas masks and wielding plastic shields protested the proposal this week. They threw stones at police, blocked a highway and were accused of setting fire to a national park. Chavez said police on his orders used tear gas to disperse the protest.
Chavez said the protest was part of a U.S.-backed plan to destabilize the oil-exporting nation ahead of the referendum.
On Saturday, he told security forces to use gas and water cannons at the first sign of trouble.
"Interior Ministry, spray them with gas and dissolve any disturbance. We cannot begin showing weakness as a government," Chavez said during a campaign meeting at a historic Venezuelan battleground.
Popular for raising the living standards of poor Venezuelans, Chavez has governed for a decade but says he needs 10 more years to extend social reforms in one of the United States' main oil suppliers.
Polls last month showed the new proposal had about 40 percent support, although pollsters expect that to rise.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1731625820090118
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