Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Geeks It’s Thursday

A TT subscriber Mark McBride is the owner and host of a website called OmniNerd. http://www.omninerd.com Mark will post each TT to the site and that way nerds, geeks, or just plain thermodynamicists will be able to enjoy thermo Thursday.

I had promised an analysis of the Toyota Prius versus a Corolla but an Omninerd beet me to the punch with a very good analysis of the Prius http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Is_a_Hybrid_Worth_It I was going to blog about a person who carpools and whether a Corolla is then better than a Prius. My belief is that it is obviously better to own a Corolla and carpool than own a Prius and not carpool. The effective fuel economy on a Corolla with two people alternating their driving is higher than the one person in a Prius. The cost of ownership of a Corolla is lower, and the added benefit of lessening the amount of cars on the road for all other motorists is also considerable. I once opined that more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline are wasted in traffic jams in the USA in addition to the more than 4 billion hours of wasted time of the motorists stuck in traffic. If we had 2/3 of the cars filled with 2 people instead of 1 person we would eliminate 1/3 of the vehicles from the road and this would free up traffic flow considerably. My crystal ball says we would better than halve the wasted time and gasoline eaten up by traffic jams. On this basis over 1 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved by not sitting in traffic. On top of this if we had one third fewer cars on the road (about 70 million vehicles) each not using 2 gallons a day for the five work days a week this carpooling effort would directly save 35 billion gallons of gasoline a year. On this basis oil prices would drop back to $2 a gallon and America would be saved. I carpool and us Carpooligans are the Paul Reveres of the 21st century.

Our science department has noticed some interesting research into nano diamonds. These diamonds are simply carbon crystals that that of the order of a nanometer in diameter. These diamonds can deliver chemotherapy to their target http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/nanodiamonds.drugs/index.html DeBeers is investigation the pharmacokinetics data to find out if a nano diamond is forever

Mayor Dilly Dally of Chicago who should have read a TT from over six months ago has woken up and acted to limit bottled water in the windy city with a tax on the plastic bottle http://news.aol.com/story/_a/bottled-water-backlash-brews-in-cities/20071018094209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001 He must have called his friend Gavel Newsome for some advice and finally this distant relative of Richard the Third has brought down the gavel on Dasiai http://www.dasani.com/flash.htm Dasani has responded with an add campaign title make our mouth water. But Dilly Dally has an ace up his sleeve and will respond with his magnum 38 saying maybe your mouth will water, but I can make you breath through your skin

All this talk of violence makes me shake. There is a new breed of chips that can generate electricity by capturing or harvesting energy from light, vibrations or even temperature difference. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TYSMWQLQJVLMGQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=202400930 I think we will be able to power wrist watches (quartz drive) from body heat. We also may be able to power an Ipod from walking.

The appendix may have a useful purpose after all as a reservoir of beneficial bacteria to aid digestion. Kind of like natural yogurt http://news.aol.com/story/_a/appendix-is-useful-after-all-scientists/20071005184009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001





It is kind of scary that Craig Venter is about to unleash a new form of life in the form a genetically modified bacterium http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299857,00.html I kind of prefer the inhabitants of my appendix over the bacteria being synthesized in Rockville MD, even if Venter claims they will chew up global warming gases

The word of the day is stentorian. As this blog is rated G for TGIT I will not make a play on words about stentorian gases but these load voices could provide the vibrations to power the new breed of energy harvesting chips

stentorian \sten-TOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:Extremely loud.
Around his family, Sergeant Charles Mingus Sr. was easily angered and often violent and closemouthed the rest of the time, except when he gave orders in a stentorian voice that carried the assumption of command.-- Gene Santoro, Myself When I Am Real
He broke the tradition of stentorian tenors, whose big voices and melodramatic high notes were needed to fill the concert halls and vaudeville houses.-- Richard Corliss, "The Book on Bing Crosby", Time, May 17, 2001
Then a stentorian voice blared an all-points bulletin: "Calling the G-men! Calling all Americans to war on the underworld!"-- Strobe Talbott, "Resisting the Gangbusters Option", Time, October 15, 1990
The bearded, often curmudgeonly Knoller can be found in the press filing center on most every presidential trip, his stentorian voice booming out 35-second takes for radio -- as many as 20 a day -- and shaping the day's news for dozens of journalists who can't help but hear him.-- Dana Milbank, "Bush by the Numbers, as Told by a Diligent Scorekeeper", Washington Post, September 3, 2002
Stentorian comes from Stentor, a Greek herald in the Trojan War. According to Homer's Iliad, his voice was as loud as that of fifty men combined.

Mass and Grams

TGIT – Thank Grams It’s Thursday Today we will discuss mass and grams are a unit of measure of mass

First a thank you to Ajay for his blog on how Brother Gibb had an oldie disco hit song titled “How deep is your love of thermo”

The EPA has reported the mileage cars sold in 2007 can expect. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.pdf

Interestingly the average mass of vehicles sold in the USA has increased significantly since 1987 from 3,221 pounds to 4,144 pounds or 1,873,088 grams. The average horsepower of a vehicle has almost doubled since 1987 from 118 to 223 horsepower. The heaviest horse in history had a mass of 3,360 pounds or about the mass of the average vehicle sold in the USA in 1987. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/22809 The acceleration of the average vehicle measured in the time taken to get from zero to sixty MPH has decreased from 13.1 seconds to 9.6 seconds in the past twenty years. The fuel economy of the average vehicle has decreased from 22.0 mpg to 20.2 mpg because of the change in mass, horsepower and the proliferation of trucks (SUVs included) from only 28% of vehicles sold in 1987 to 49% of the vehicles to be sold in 2007.

Going back further than Brother Gibb to Brother Newton and his second law of motion http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newton3laws.html we all know that the force that is needed to be applied to an object to yield a set acceleration is directly proportional to the mass ( F=MA ). In accelerating cars from zero to sixty there are some other forces (resistance) to be overcome such as wind resistance and rolling resistance but for the moment will simply deal with old Isaac’s second law. The mass of the vehicles has increased in the past twenty years by 29%. Acceleration increased by 36% so accounting for increased mass and increased acceleration one would have expected the required force from the engine to have increased by 75% which is in line with the added horsepower in the 2007 models. So how did we only get a 8% reduction in fuel efficiency? This can be answered by the improved efficiency of the later model engines. Primarily as a result of fuel injection, multi valve engines, and variable valve timing that were not available back in the old days. These improvements all relate to how the fuel is burned in the engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_injection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-valve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_valve_timing




Below is a cut out of a fuel injector

Below is a cut out of Honda’s variable valve timing engine




Going forward we will have higher compression engines, direct fuel injection and of course smaller and lighter vehicles. We can thank the Governator for the proliferation of SUVs as his movie Kindergarten Cop started the Hummer rage http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0422-02.htm My prediction is that within a decade the average mass of a vehicle will drop to value we had in 1987 and the average fuel efficiency will be close to 30 mpg. Also within a decade we will have long forgotten Arnie.



Here is some good news from Michigan and it is not about the heavy metal vehicles they produce there. The city of Ann Arbor will convert 1,400 street lights to LEDs http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct17/0,4670,TechBitCityapossBrightIdea,00.html Raleigh and Toronto have also begun to use LEDs. Maybe Hollywood will be next.

All this talk about weapons of mass combustion brings me to my final point of the week. Raytheon a defense contractor has developed a heat ray weapon http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UASDYV2WZ3VAOQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=202400400

This is the ultimate terrible misuse of thermo! Imagine the government spent $40 million to develop a ray gun that heats the top 1/64” of your skin to 130 degrees F. This goes beyond tasers and will be marketed as the Blaser.

The word of the day is abscond. If a cop was pointing the heat ray gun at me I would certainly abscond

Word of the DayThursday October 18, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
abscond \ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.
The criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinion: he simply wants to abscond with his money or accomplish his mercenary task in the quickest and easiest way possible so that he may reap his reward and enjoy the fruits of his labours.-- Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism
Pearl, now an orphan (her father having absconded shortly after her conception), has been taken to live with her great-aunt Margaret in the north of England.-- Zoe Heller, Everything You Know
Abscond comes from Latin abscondere, "to conceal," from ab-, abs-, "away" + condere, "to put, to place."

Space Exploration

TGIT - Thank Gagarin It’s Thursday

Yes we have to thank the Reds (not Cincinnati) for today’s episode of TT. It is exactly 50 years ago today that space exploration began. The USSR launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298728,00.html This 180 pound payload sat atop a R7 Rocket. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.html Sputnik did nothing except send some radio noise back to earth http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/sputnik.wav

For the non baby boomers who never looked at the sky in October 1957 to view the flight path of Sputnik, Gagarin was the first person to go into space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin Gagarin was selected because of his small stature. He was only 5 foot 2 inches tall.

Actually the object that was visible in the night sky that Hunting for Red October was not Sputnik (it was simply too small) but was the second stage of the rocket that launched Sputnik.





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How much fuel was used to place the little noise maker in orbit? The Russian website lists the specification of 253 metric tons of propellant. The propellant was kerosene the same fuel used by jets. A pound of kerosene has a fuel value of approximately 19,000 BTUs. Therefore approximately 10.5 billion BTUS were needed to set the space race in motion. This amount of energy is equivalent to 92,000 gallons of gasoline or enough gasoline for the average US motorist to drive for over 125 years.

We continue the space race and have launched many more satellites that now clutter the near space around earth. But Sputnik was the first and that is why we remember it.

Talking about space and time, we have a report on how much time commuters waste in traffic. http://www.kentucky.com/101/story/180483.html Los Angeles leads the US in wasting time in traffic jams with each motorist wasting 72 hours each year. San Francisco is not far behind. Gagarin only spent one hour and 48 minutes in space so we all should get the medal of the soviet empire for the long time we spend cooped up in our capsules. In total we Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic wasting 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline crawling bumper to bumper. This amount of wasted gasoline could have launched over 31,500 sputniks. I therefore suggest a solution to this waste of time, money and precious BTUs. Let’s carpool! If we halve the number of vehicles on the road in rush hour we will not waste 3 days a year stuck on the freeways in the city of angels. Next week I will discuss how it is better for the earth and your pocketbook to buy a Corolla and carpool than buying a Prius and driving on your own to work.

The word of the day is redoubtable. I do believe that the accomplishment of Yuri Gagarin remains redoubtable.

redoubtable \rih-DOW-tuh-buhl\, adjective:1. Arousing fear or alarm; formidable.2. Illustrious; eminent; worthy of respect or honor.
He had been particularly involved in and articulate over policy toward East Asia, stressing the threat from China after the Communists won power there in 1949, and had made dramatic impressions of competence and coolness on two occasions -- under the physical threat of a crowd in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958, and in a dramatic kitchen debate in the Soviet Union in 1959 with the redoubtable Nikita Khrushchev.-- William Bundy, A Tangled Web
The prospect was daunting, not least because Evelyn was still a redoubtable figure on campus whom I saw almost every day and to whom I went for advice almost as regularly.-- Keith Stewart Thomson, The Common But Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays
At the head of the table, as committee chair, sat the redoubtable Howard Mumford Jones—a teacher famed even at Harvard for his fierce authority, his wide-ranging erudition, and his intolerant exacting preciseness.-- Nicholas Delbanco, The Lost Suitcase
Redoubtable derives from Old French redouter, "to dread," from Medieval Latin redubitare, "to fear," literally "to doubt back at," from Latin re- + dubitare, "to doubt."

Who the heck is Galvin?

TGIT – Thank Galvin It’s Thursday

You all may ask who the heck is Galvin? Well he was the CEO of Motorola and has started an initiative to improve the electrical supply system in the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvin_Electricity_Initiative
There is much debate about plug in hybrids and purely electric cars. No matter what the electrical power system is need of an upgrade. Next month Tesla Motors will start selling their Lotus built roadster that uses lithium ion batteries as the energy source. http://www.teslamotors.com/



This car will sell for $98,000 and not too many will be produced. The batteries have just over 54 kilowatt hours of stored energy and the battery pack will have a mass of some 900 pounds. The rest of the car (frame, body and motor) will weigh another 1,000 pounds. These batteries are good for 500 cycles of charge discharge and the range of the vehicle is 200 miles so the battery pack should be good for 100,000 miles. Tesla is more practical than the ultracapacitor we discussed last week as charging is accomplished in a little more than 3 hours so the service needed from the electric company is only 150 amps at 110 volts. Tesla however will remain unaffordable until lithium ion batteries are less expensive.

Last week there were many new efficient prototype vehicles displayed at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Mercedes will introduce hybrids in the next couple of years. The car has not been named but the Re-Volt could be a winner.



Frankfurt Auto Show Features Hybrids, Fuel Cells, and Minis
European automakers demonstrated a new interest in hybrid and electric vehicles at last week's Frankfurt Auto Show, while automakers of all nationalities showed a strong interest in small cars. For example, Mercedes-Benz arrived at the show with seven hybrids, including a luxury sedan concept vehicle called the F 700, a 17-foot-long car that achieves a fuel economy of 44.4 miles per gallon (mpg). The research vehicle features a homogenous charge compression ignition engine, a technology that produces the high fuel economy of a diesel engine from a clean-burning gasoline engine. Mercedes has also mated its clean-diesel engine to an electric motor, creating the Bluetec hybrid. The company plans to introduce a gasoline-fueled hybrid SUV and sedan in 2009, followed by two Bluetec hybrids in 2010, one of which will achieve 51 miles per gallon of diesel fuel. The company also plans to start the limited production of its first fuel-cell vehicle in 2010. In addition, the Mercedes Car Group exhibited its smart car in three new incarnations: an electric-only vehicle and both diesel and gasoline versions with "micro hybrid drive," a belt-driven starter and alternator that allows the engine to shut off at stops. See the DaimlerChrysler press releases about the auto show and the F700.
The Ford Verve concept may indicate the company's future direction for small cars. Credit: Ford Motor Company
Opel, a division of General Motors Corporation, exhibited the Flextreme, a plug-in hybrid that can travel 34 miles on its lithium-ion battery before a small diesel engine starts charging the battery. Opel also exhibited the Corsa Hybrid Concept, a coupe that combines a belt-driven starter and alternator with a lithium-ion battery. Volvo Cars, a division of Ford Motor Company, exhibited a plug-in hybrid with motors in each of the wheels. The Volvo ReCharge Concept can travel about 60 miles on battery power alone, using a lithium-polymer battery pack that can be recharged in a standard outlet. Ford also exhibited the Ford Verve Concept, a stylish small car billed as "the first sign of what the future may hold." See GM press releases about the Corsa Hybrid and the Opel Flextreme and the press releases from Volvo and Ford.
Asian automakers were also present at the show, and even unveiled some world premieres. Hyundai unveiled its third-generation fuel-cell vehicle, the i-Blue crossover vehicle. And Toyota introduced the iQ concept, a vehicle that looks much like a smart car, but seats three adults "in comfort." The company also exhibited two new models of its Yaris subcompact. See the press releases from Hyundai and Toyota.


Not to be left out China is also going green if only for a day. This Saturday China has declared this Saturday a “No-Car Day”. My suspicion is that the Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community in China who follow the strict observance of the Sabbath convinced the Ministry of Construction of the wisdom of a car sick out http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070917/sc_afp/chinaautotrafficenvironment


As proof I am not a crank I offer these recent articles on the virtues of LEDs http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=S4BOSDHS1GHYAQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=201805563
and the non-virtues of biofuels http://www.euractiv.com/en/transport/oecd-blasts-eu-biofuels-rush/article-166628 I had inside knowledge that the OECD would issue a statement condemning bio-fuels as one of the subscribers to TT attended the OECD session a few months back.

I had opined several months ago that if each citizen of the US shed 10 pounds of fat this would propel our cars for half a day in the form of bio-diesel. CNN recently reported that airlines are spending nearly $300 million a year in extra fuel cost to carry the extra fat now common in the population http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2007/09/14/bod.squad.obese.travel.cnn

The hundred dollar laptop to help poor kids around the world gain access to the internet goes into production in November. Unfortunately the $100 price target could not be met and the actual cost will be $188. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WZP5VHYUQEUNYQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=201806663

The word of the day is recreant a word we never use to describe TT readers.

Word of the DayThursday September 20, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
recreant \REK-ree-uhnt\, adjective:1. Cowardly; craven.2. Unfaithful; disloyal.
noun:1. A coward.2. An unfaithful or disloyal person.
His recreant companion disappears around the fence, but he remains, smiling affably.-- Eric J. Segal, "Norman Rockwell and the fashioning of American masculinity", Art Bulletin, December 1, 1996
To any man there may come at times a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not. . . . The open door was closed in his recreant face.-- Genie Babb, "Where the bodies are buried", Narrative, October 1, 2002
Wordsworth compares himself to a truant, a false steward, a recreant, when he does not write poetry, when poetic numbers fail to come spontaneously, when his harp is defrauded and the singer ends in silence.-- J. Douglas Kneale, "Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art", Criticism, September 22, 1996
And it appears in the way the review essay was set up: Aronson versus Miliband, the recreant versus the faithful one.-- Ronald Aronson, "Response to Victor Wallis", Monthly Review, October 1, 1996
But was it worth surrendering your religion, hence your honor, and becoming a recreant?-- Eugen Weber, "The Ups and Downs of Honor", American Scholar, January 1, 1999
Recreant comes from Old French, from the present participle of recroire, "to yield in a trial by battle," from re-, "re-" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere.

About the universe

TGIT – Thank Galaxies It’s Thursday

I was watching a TV show about the universe on the history channel and how from the time of Newton we have used mathematics to model the physical world and in particular motion and gravity. Einstein developed the notion of space time surfaces that warp in the presence mass. Einstein did not ascribe to the notion of an expanding universe even though his math supported this. In order for the big bang theory to hold there is this initial state where all the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces) were all combined in a single force. When the big bang happened the gravitational force was the first to break away and soon afterwards the three other forces split. An observation that led to the unified force theory and the initial inflation after the big bang is that most of the outer universe is at the same temperature and this can only be explained in that the initial inflation (Guth’s theory) occurred at a speed faster than the speed of light http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/inflation.html http://physics.about.com/od/physics101thebasics/f/fund_forces.htm

All this physics is fine but we still have the basic inflation problem on planet earth of high energy prices. Physicists and chemists are trying to invent nanosystems to store more electrical energy so we can use less gasoline. This company in Texas called EEstor http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStor claims to have an ultracapcitor that can store enough electricity to travel 500 miles. All of this energy is placed into the ultra capacitor in five minutes. The rate at which electricity is transferred exceeds 1 MW so don’t rush to buy one of these gizmos as you will need 10,000 amp service in your home at 110 volts. The typical home has 100 to 200 amps of service. If the ultra capacitor short circuits we could reenact the Big Bang.

John sent me a picture taken in South Africa of airmen who fly in formation and let their wheels skim the water to simulate water skiing please note the lead airman is a distant cousin “Numb Scully Levin”

Early morning anglers are treated to the spectacle of four T6 Harvards from the Flying Lions Aerobatic team water skiing across the Klipdrift Dam near Johannesburg, South Africa.Led by Scully Levin, with wingmen Arnie Meneghelli, Stewart Lithgow, and Ellis Levin - this renowned airshow display team rehearse a sequence for the newly launched "Aviation Action" television program on SuperSport TV. Arnie Meneghelli from Academy Brushware, owner of the aircraft, has this to say, "What we did today I believe is a world first".K This unusual act, approved by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and supported by Castrol Aviation, was meticulously planned and took place under the watchful eye of divers and paramedics that were on site.




Time magazine has published their Fifty Worst Autos in the history of travel you all may want to page through these and see just how many dumb ideas have been tried in the past for autos. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1657686,00.html?cnn=yes

I also found an interesting site on auto history http://www.mrtraffic.com/millennium.htm

My guess is the ultra capacitor will make it into the updates of these sites in ten years time.

The word of the day is impassible not to be confused with impossible which best describes my review of the ultra capacitor technology

Word of the DayWednesday September 12, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
impassible \im-PASS-uh-buhl\, adjective:1. Incapable of suffering; not subject to harm or pain.2. Unfeeling or not showing feeling.
Body is flux and frustration, a locus of pain and process. If it becomes impassible and incorruptible, how is it still body?-- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven
As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it-- Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
Impassible is from Late Latin impassibilis, from Latin in-, "not" + Late Latin passibilis, "passible; capable of feeling or suffering" from Latin passus, past participle of pati, "to suffer." It is related to passion, which originally meant "suffering" but came to apply to any strong feeling or emotion.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for impassible

Geometry can count

TGIT Thank Geometry it’s Thursday

Today I am sending Thermo Thursday a day early.

Yes geometry can count in saving BTUS. There is a coefficient of drag (CD) that is used in aerodynamics to calculate the amount of drag in fluid flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient Note this has nothing to do with the costume design at Beach Blanket Babylon. http://www.beachblanketbabylon.com/

The shape of a vehicle can improve the fuel efficiency if the coefficient of drag is reduced. The energy required to propel a vehicle through the air is proportional to the coefficient of drag. In a TT of about a year ago I wrote about the bio-car that is shaped like a box fish that only has a CD of 0.19. The Prius has a CD of 0.29 and the Hummer has one greater than 0.5.

Below are some photos of some new aerodynamic tractor trailers that will possibly be manufactured in the future




I have opined of the great harm being caused by biofuels. Steve sent me a link he found in which a very large UK bus operator will no longer use Biodiesel in their fleet because of these very same concerns http://www.masstransitmag.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=4273 This is good news and more of this type of news will be coming from Europe over the next several months.

The US DOE (Department of Entropy) and its head Gangrene Bodman continue to waste the planet’s resources and our money on the futile effort of Biofuels. Since the cost to society of biofuels is the tripling of the cost of tortillas I suggest the EPA change its “SmartWay Grow and Go” program to the “Help Global Starvation and Misery” program. Volvo who take pride in their engines running on seven renewable fuels should remember Josephs interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream of the seven lean years.

EPA Recognizes 48 Companies for Promoting Renewable Fuels in Trucks
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged 48 companies in late August that have joined its "SmartWay Grow & Go" program, which encourages the use of renewable fuels in tractor-trailer trucks. The EPA program, launched in October 2006, is an offshoot of the EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership, which encourages the development and use of efficient trucks. The new program aims to convince one-quarter of the EPA's SmartWay Transport partners to start using renewable fuels by 2012, raising that to one-half of the partners by 2020. EPA is currently working with about 600 SmartWay Transport partners, including major truck and rail carriers as well as shipping and logistics companies, so the agency still has a way to go before reaching its goal. But one partner, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), is certainly doing its part, providing mapping software that helps truckers find biodiesel pumps. See the NBB press release.
The EPA recognized its partners at the Great American Trucking Show, where it also displayed the first SmartWay-certified tractors and trailers, a lineup of the cleanest, most fuel-efficient heavy-duty trucks available on the market. The six new models of SmartWay tractors and trailers are equipped with a series of advanced aerodynamic features, idle-reduction options, and low-rolling-resistance tires that together can serve as a model for improving the fuel efficiency of heavy-duty trucks by up to 20%. To date, SmartWay partners have saved more than 350 million gallons of diesel fuel and eliminated nearly 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, primarily through the adoption of fuel-saving technologies and strategies, according to the EPA. See the EPA press release and the list of partners on the SmartWay Grow & Go Web site.
While most people would think of biodiesel when talking about renewable fuels in trucks, the Volvo Group recently demonstrated that its trucks can be modified to run on up to seven different renewable fuels. Volvo ran its trucks on biodiesel; biogas (methane); a mix of biodiesel and liquefied biogas; dimethyl ether, or DME, produced by gasifying biomass; a blend of ethanol and methanol; synthetic diesel produced from gasified biomass; and a mix of hydrogen and biogas. As the CEO of Volvo put it, "With these vehicles, we have shown that Volvo is ready, that we possess the technology and the resources for carbon-dioxide-free transport ... " See the Volvo press release.


The word of the day is antiquarian In the next century antiquarians will study Volvos

antiquarian \an-tuh-KWAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:1. One who collects, studies, or deals in objects or relics from the past.
adjective:1. Of or pertaining to antiquarians or objects or relics from the past.2. Dealing in or concerned with old or rare books.
From the depositions filed with the Loyalist Claims Commission after the Revolution, from a handful of letters gathered by an antiquarian at the beginning of the twentieth century, and from scattered court papers in scattered archives, it is possible to piece together some of the family's history.-- Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies
Except to antiquarians and preservationists, silent cinema has little presence on the cultural radar screen, its landmark films unrented on video, its iconic images spotted only as fodder for video collage on MTV.-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood
Indeed, the evident attention to detail and studied historicism bore the impress of Truefitt's years with the antiquarian Cottingham.-- Francis R. Kowsky, Country, Park & City
A friend of mine, the manager of an antiquarian bookshop in Leningrad in the 1960s, told me that he remembered well the twice-monthly visits of a matronly lady from the censorship bureau, who spent hours rifling through the thousands of books on his shelves, checking them against her latest copy of the Summary List (which was always being updated).-- David King, The Commissar Vanishes
Antiquarian is from Latin antiquarius, "pertaining to antiquity," from antiquus, "ancient."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for antiquarian

Contributors

Lindsay Leveen, "The Green Machine", has worked with and consulted to major corporations in areas of energy deregulation, fuel cells, biotech, telecommunication, alternate fuels, power generation, transmission and distribution, as well as a variety of other process based technologies. Lindsay has held executive position in strategic planning and sustainable development at Fortune 500 companies. Andrew Tobias has called Lindsay "Frighteningly Bright". Lindsay has lectured at leading universities and numerous industry conferences. Lindsay also writes for the Ark Newspaper in Tiburon California. Lindsay has a knack to simplify and explain thermodynamics in everyday terms. Lindsay studied thermodynamics for his graduate thesis in Chemical Engineering at Iowa State University. Lindsay likes to misquote Warren Buffett by saying "be green when all are fearful and be fearful when all are green." Read his blogs on Green Explored and you too will be able discern Green from Gangrene.

Elizabeth James is a green consumerista and blogger. Look for her posts on green trends in fashion and other consumer items. Once, in the third grade, she read that balloon launches were harmful to the environment. And so when her school was planning a launch, she successfully campaigned to have it replaced with a less-impactful means of celebration. Today she continues her crusade with her wallet, buying green and informing consumers on how to do the same.

Patricia Ewanski, MS, MBA, LEED AP, PMP is the founder of re-HOME™, a local green building consultancy whose focus is to help reduce unnecessary resource and energy consumption in homes. Prior to starting re-HOME, Patricia consulted in the commercial green building sphere, and was involved in projects such as completing research and writing for a NAIOP report concerning green building incentives and an analysis of U.S. green building legislation at the state level. Patricia is a Governing Council Member of the Southern AZ Branch of the USGBC and has served on various committees including the Technical Committee and the Communications Committee. Patricia holds the AZ state-level USGBC position of Residential Green Building Advocate and heads the state-wide Residential Green Building Committee. Patricia comes to us today with a strong background and knowledge of retrofitting and business and can assist others in navigating new opportunities in retrofitting, sustainable building, and sustainable business.

Mark Bremer is a green family man, teaching his two children to have minimal impact on the earth. Mark is a Lecturer of Biology at SUNYIT Utica/Rome and is a member of their Sustainability Task Force. Mark recently earned a Professional Certificate in Campus Sustainability Leadership from the University of Vermont and is coordinating a Green Campus Initiative at SUNYIT. For his graduate work in Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University, Mark studied the effects of acid rain on microbial forest soil communities throughout the Northeastern U.S. Other research he has conducted includes ecological field studies for the Smithsonian in Virginia and Scarlet Macaw nesting behavior with the National University of Costa Rica. Mark is also an avid hiker and nature photographer, with extensive experience in the Colorado Rockies, Denali Park, and Adirondacks Mountains.

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