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Recent Commentsby Gus Leonisky on Mon, 2013-05-06 07:52
Australian scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the efficiency of solar panels while substantially reducing their cost. The University of NSW researchers have come up with improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade. The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in silicon cells used in solar panels. As a consequence, poor quality silicon can be made to perform like high quality wafers. The process makes cheap silicon "actually better than the best-quality material people are using at the moment", the head of the university's photovoltaics centre of excellence, Professor Stuart Wenham, said. Silicon wafers account for more than half the cost of making a solar cell. "By using lower-quality silicon, you can drastically reduce that cost," he said. "We've been able to figure out what the secret is that enables hydrogen to sometimes work the way people want it to, and sometimes doesn't." At present, the best commercial solar cells convert between 17 per cent and 19 per cent of the sun's energy into electricity. UNSW's technique, patented this year, should produce efficiencies of between 21 per cent and 23 per cent. by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 21:18
BOB DIAMOND, the former Barclays boss once described as the "unacceptable face of banking" by Peter Mandelson, has claimed he is not motivated by money and doesn't even own a boat. In a lengthy interview with The New York Times, his first since being ousted from Barclays in the wake of the Libor rate-rigging scandal ten months ago, the American-born banker explains that while it might sound as "arrogant as hell", he "never set money as a goal. It was a result."
And I believe in fairies... by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 21:07
Republican voters are told over and over by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and GOP leaders in Congress that climate change is a sham, a scare campaign orchestrated by scientists with liberal agendas. Ergo, Republicans are less likely than others to believe that fossil-fuel burning is changing the climate. It stands to reason, therefore, that they are less likely to support efforts to tackle the problem. But once Republicans come to understand that the world is indeed imperiled by global warming, they begin to support government actions to try to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Climatic Change. Researchers analyzed the results of a 2012 Gallup poll that asked around 1,000 Americans about their climate change views. From a Michigan State University press release: U.S. residents who believe in the scientific consensus on global warming are more likely to support government action to curb emissions, regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat, according to a study led by a Michigan State University sociologist. http://grist.org/news/study-when-republicans-believe-scientists-they-support-climate-action/ by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 20:56
Britain was offering to sell arms to the Argentinian dictatorship just three days before the invasion of the Falkland Islands, newly released documents in the National Archive show. The British ambassador in Buenos Aires sent a telegram to the Ministry of Defence in London on 29 March 1982 saying that the Argentine air force had an "interest in acquiring extra squadron bombers". Ambassador Anthony Williams planned to meet the head of the Argentine air force the "next week" to discuss the sale. The subject of that meeting – obviously cancelled when Argentina invaded the islands on 2 April – was the sale of Canberra jet bombers and the refurbishment of other bombers that Britain had previously sold to the regime. "BAe [British Aerospace] is committed to making a proposal [to refurbish the planes] … if all goes well here BAe could move further up the class in time," Ambassador Williams wrote. The documents show that British arms sales to Argentina's junta, notorious for its abuses of human rights, jumped after Margaret Thatcher came to power. Arms sales rose from £4.9m in 1978 to £66.6m in 1979; £62.6m in 1980 and £12.5m in 1981. Margaret Thatcher's government oversaw the delivery of two Lynx helicopters in 1979 and a Type-42 destroyer in 1980, contracts that had been agreed by the previous Labour government. Both the helicopters and the destroyer were used in the invasion of the Falklands by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 20:29
Scientists have developed the first global model that analyses the routes taken by marine invasive species. The researchers examined the movements of cargo ships around the world to identify the hot spots where these aquatic aliens might thrive. Marine species are taken in with ballast water on freighters and wreak havoc in new locations, driving natives to extinction. The research is published in the Journal Ecology Letters. There has been a well-documented boom in global shipping over the past 20 years and this has led to growing numbers of species moving via ballast tanks, or by clinging to hulls. Some ports such as San Francisco and Chesapeake Bay have reportedseveral exotic new species arriving every year. Economic estimates indicate that marine invaders can have huge impacts that last for decades. Now, scientists from the UK and Germany have developed a model that might help curb these unwanted visitors. They obtained detailed logs from nearly three million voyages that took place in 2007 and 2008. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22397076 Read article at top, seriously... by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 14:20
A quarter of British adults now walk for less than nine minutes a day – including time spent getting to the car, work and the shops. The figures, from a YouGov poll for the Ramblers, published exclusively in The Independent on Sunday, reveal that a quarter of Britons walk on average for less than an hour every week. The survey of more than 2,000 over-18s shows that while nine out of 10 Britons agree that walking is a good form of exercise which can keep you healthy, most are not doing so nearly enough. Almost half of people surveyed walk for two hours or less a week – meaning they are not doing enough walking to stay healthy. Chief medical officers recommend that adults do 150 minutes of moderate physical activity, like walking, per week, but 43 per cent of people surveyed walk for 120 minutes or less. William Bird, a GP who specialises in the benefits of exercise, said: "We're going to find this generation will die earlier than their parents if they don't start doing basic movement. We all age quicker when we're not moving and the consequences of that are age-related diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer."
See the Kartoffeln at top...
by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 14:09
(Callow fanatical monarchist Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie is reported to have used doctored survey figures to justify moving Labour Day rather than the irrelevant Queen’s Birthday holiday.) For Labour Day is not a celebration of militant trade unionism. It is not a conga-line of left-wing ratbags winding their way through the streets chanting slogans calling for the downfall of capitalism. Labour Day, particularly in today’s world – where ordinary hard-working people are increasingly left bleeding on the economic roadside from collateral damage inflicted by the global recession – it is about family, freedom, and a fair go. It is about empowerment in a world where individuals still too often have little control over their own destiny when it comes to the workplace. So celebrate Labour Day. Celebrate trade unions, freedom of association, vigorous debate and working families. For that is the sum of us. (This is an edited version of the 2013 Alex Macdonald Lecture Labour Day: Family, freedom and a fair go. The origins to Queensland’s Labour Day and the recent shift of date delivered to the Brisbane Labour History Association on 1 May 2013 by Dr Glenn Davies) http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/australian-identity/queensland/labour-day-is-here-to-stay/ You won't have to remind me not to visit Queensland... Labor Day on the first of May is a date for workers around the world... The Queen's birthday is never on her real birthday...
by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 13:58
The economic literature is full of excellent articles that are not read outside small academic circles. There are, however, important exceptions. “Growth in a Time of Debt”, by Carmen R. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, published in the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), May 2010, is one of these exceptions. Technically speaking, the paper is not particularly sophisticated. But it conveys a strong message: high public debt levels reduce economic growth. To prove this point, Reinhart and Rogoff looked at historical data for 20 advanced economies. They found that “median growth rates for countries with public debt over roughly 90% of GDP are about one percent lower than otherwise”. Policymakers, especially in Europe, have often quoted the work of Reinhart and Rogoff to provide an intellectual foundation to the fiscal austerity policies that they have used to try to address the ongoing Eurozone crisis. But just a few days ago, this powerful intellectual structure cracked. FormulagateLast week, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin published a working paper that casts serious doubts on the validity of Reinhart’s and Rogoff’s analysis. Herdon, Ash, and Pollin argue that the results of Reinhart and Rogoff heavily depend on some unorthodox methodological choices. Even more importantly, they uncovered an error in one of the Excel formulas used by Reinhart and Rogoff to compute averages of public debt and growth across countries. Once more orthodox methodological choices are applied and the coding errors removed, Herdon, Ash and Pollin obtain results that look quite different from those reported by Reinhart and Rogoff. The analysis critical of the Reinhart and Rogoff paper was mentioned on this site a few days ago BUT... PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE ENVIRONMENT.... (see comment above)...
by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 13:50
Big banks were still doing it ''tough'', Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly said after Westpac reported a record half-year profit of more than $3 billion and a bumper dividend for shareholders. But the handsome rewards for bank shareholders have not been passed on to bank customers, with Mrs Kelly hanging tough on her bank's track record of not passing on Reserve Bank interest rate cuts in full to home loan borrowers. The record profits for Westpac have resulted in fresh calls for a bank super profits tax amid claims of ''gouging'' and strong union criticism of hundreds of Westpac redundancies. Hot on the heels of a similarly strong result by rival ANZ this week, Westpac on Friday posted a 10 per cent leap in cash earnings to a record $3.525 billion for the half-year.
by Gus Leonisky on Sun, 2013-05-05 13:20
The latest episode in Australia's quest to find a satisfying moral dimension to life through sport is due to peak on May 6.
At a national level, the More Joyous inquiry is an opportunity to answer - at least in part - the naggingly elusive question of whether there is anything vaguely dodgy about the racing industry. At a journalistic level, it's a pure and unalloyed delight. When else are we going to get the chance to refer, with a straight face, to ''Racing NSW's general manager of integrity, Ray 'The Hat' Murrihy''?
Aaahhhh, Annabel... what a punch in the face of the gambling industry, with a soggy wet lettuce!... More fluff and bubbles than any Dada contraption designed to make you accept a urinal as a work of art... Fantastic... Yes the gambling industry is creaming a lot of extra dosh that the welfare and charity organisations claim is not in the pool of discretionary cash... And what about those poor gambling addicts who lost their money on a silly horse race that may or may not have been rigged... There are many ways to rig a racehorse, from pills to a slightly bent nail in the shoes, near a nerve... But I don't bet... I might buy a lotto ticket with a 3 billion chances of loosing two bucks to one on winning 3 millions buckaroos... But I only do it on the days I find loose change under the sofa cushions to go and buy some milk and, elation, I found a bit more dosh than expected... |
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