S20-27-07-08.qxd
26.07.2008
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China aims for bigger slice of satellite market China aims to build a leading aerospace industry by 2015, when the country would command 10 percent of the world's commercial satellite market and 15 percent of the space launch market, Xinhua said on Friday. Beijing was planning to double the number of aerospace scientific research and production bases to eight. Beijing, Reuters
project, said in a statement. Jeff Snyder of Caltech, who worked on the project, said a thermoelectric device that converts heat from exhaust into electricity could improve a car's fuel efficiency by 10 percent. Snyder, who previously developed such devices for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the idea of using thermoelectrics had been around for a long time, but the economics did not make sense when oil cost $20 a barrel. Chicago Reuters
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Pasadena, California, think they can recycle some of that lost energy with a new thermoelectric material that is twice as effective as current materials. "The material does all the work. It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines -- steam engines, gas or diesel engines -- that are coupled to electrical generators, but it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly," Joseph Heremans, who led the
Scientists learn what makes Northern Lights flare The multicolored aurora borealis and aurora australis -- the Northern Lights and Southern Lights -- represent some of Earth's most dazzling natural displays. Now scientists using data from five NASA satellites have learned what causes frequent auroral flare-ups that make this green, red and purple lightshow that shimmers above Earth's northernmost and southernmost regions even more spectacular. Writing in the journal Science, the scientists said on Thursday that explosions of magnetic energy occurring a third of the way between Earth and the moon drive the sudden brightening of the Northern Lights and Southern Lights. There had been debate among scientists dating back decades about what triggers these auroral flare-ups. The findings from the THEMIS satellites and a network of 20 ground observatories in Canada and Alaska confirmed that it is due to a process called "magnetic reconnection." THEMIS stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission. Auroral displays are associated with the solar wind -- electrically charged particles continuously spewing outward from the sun. Earth's magnetic field lines reach far out into space as they store energy from the solar wind. The researchers said that as two magnetic field lines come close together due to the storage of energy from the sun, a critical limit is reached and the lines reconnect, causing magnetic energy to be turned into kinetic energy and heat. The release of this energy sparks the auroral flare-ups. "We showed that the process begins far from Earth first and propagates Earthward later," said Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the research. Washington Reuters
AP
A new, highly efficient material that converts heat into electricity may one day help cars get the most out of a gallon of gas, US researchers said on Thursday. Only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move the vehicle or run accessories like the radio or windshield wipers, they said. Much of the rest escapes through the exhaust pipe. Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus and Caltech in
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New materýal could help stretch a gallon of gas
AP
WWW.SUNDAYSZAMAN.COM SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2008
More than 1,000 died in painkiller overdoses At least 1,013 people died of overdoses in several US cities from 2005 to 2007 after illegally injecting the highly potent painkiller fentanyl, US officials said. The fentanyl, at least some of which came from Mexico, was sold illegally by drug dealers on US streets, sometimes mixed with cocaine and heroin, according to a report issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Chicago area had the most deaths with 349, followed by Philadelphia with 269, the Detroit area with 230. Other deaths were reported in St. Louis, Missouri, and the states of Delaware and New Jersey. Emergency medical personnel reported finding some victims with the needle still in their arms, not having completed the injection because the drug was so powerful, said retired CDC public health service officer Dr. Stephen Jones, who wrote the report. The fentanyl caused perhaps hundreds of other deaths not reflected in the official tally of 1,013 deaths, Jones said in a telephone interview. "I think this is an extraordinary episode of fatal drug overdoses. But it's got to be recognized as part of the bigger problem of the increasing numbers of drug overdose deaths in the United States." The number of deaths from drug overdoses and other cases of unintentional drug poisonings jumped from 11,155 in 1999 to 22,448 in 2005, the CDC noted, with powerful painkilling drugs playing an important role. The fentanyl used in Chicago and Detroit was believed to have come from an illicit production facility in Toluca, Mexico, that was shut down by authorities in May 2006, the CDC said. Washington Reuters CM Y K