Harley-Davidson Refining Electric Motorcycle Design
June 19th, 2014Via: AP:
Harley-Davidson will unveil its first electric motorcycle next week, and President Matt Levatich said he expects the company known for its big touring bikes and iconic brand to become a leader in developing technology and standards for electric vehicles.
Harley will show handmade demonstration models Monday at an invitation-only event in New York. The company will then take several dozen riders on a 30-city tour to test drive the bikes and provide feedback. Harley will use the information it gathers to refine the bike, which might not hit the market for several more years.
Related: The LAPD Just Got a Military-Grade Electric Bike for Stealth Missions
Britain: Antibiotic Resistance Breakthrough
June 19th, 2014Via: Independent:
Scientists at a British university have claimed a breakthrough in the race to beat the global health threat of antibiotic resistance.
In research that could pave the way for an entirely new class of drugs to combat highly resistant “superbugs”, the scientists say they have found the “Achilles heel” of a major group of bacteria which includes E.coli and other potentially deadly species.
Antibiotic resistance – the process whereby bacteria evolve resistance to the drugs we use to treat them – is regarded by most experts as one of the gravest threats facing mankind, ranking alongside climate change and global terrorism. In Europe there are already estimated to be 25,000 deaths per year as a result of drug-resistant infections.
Developing new forms of antibiotics is seen as one of the key avenues for combating the threat. Now scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) say that they have discovered a way in which drugs could attack the cell membrane of one of the three major bacteria groups, known as gram negatives.
‘BPA-Free’ Baby Bottles Are Loaded with Other Estrogen Mimickers
June 19th, 2014Via: Natural News:
Baby bottles from AVENT, Born Free, Green to Grow, Evenflo and Weil Baby all emit high or very high levels of hormone-altering chemicals, says new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. (1)
“Many PC-replacement-products made from acrylic, polystyrene, polyethersulfone, and Tritan resins leached chemicals with [estrogenic activity], including products made for use by babies. Exposure to various forms of UV radiation often increased the leaching of chemicals with estrogenic activity,” write the study authors.
The conclusion of the study will send shockwaves across the baby products industry, stunning many parents who thought “BPA-free” meant “free from all hormone-disrupting chemicals.”
Elon Musk Needs a Very Big Factory for His New Solar Technology
June 19th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review:
Billionaire, Tesla founder, and private space entrepreneur Elon Musk announced yesterday that Solar City, the solar installation company where he is chairman, plans to acquire a startup called Silevo for $200 million (plus up to $150 million more if the company meets certain goals). And with typical bravado, he also said that the company plans to build a huge factory to produce Silevo’s high-efficiency solar panels, a strategy he claims will make solar power “way cheaper” than power from fossil fuels.
Solar City is one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing solar installers, largely as a result of an innovative business model that allows homeowners and businesses to avoid any up-front cost. If its plans pan out, it will also become a major manufacturer of solar panels, with by far the largest factory in the U.S.
The acquisition makes sense given that Silevo’s technology has the potential to reduce the cost of installing solar panels, Solar City’s main business. But the decision to build a huge factory in the U.S. seems daring—especially given the recent failures of other U.S.-based solar manufacturers in the face of competition from Asia. Ultimately, however, Solar City may have little choice—it needs to find ways to reduce costs to keep growing.
Silevo produces solar panels that are roughly 15 to 20 percent more efficient than conventional ones. They incorporate thin films of silicon, which increase efficiency by helping electrons flow more freely out of the material, and they use copper rather than silver electrodes to save costs. Higher efficiency can yield big savings on installation costs, which often exceed the cost of the panels themselves, because fewer panels are needed to generate a given amount of power.
Silevo isn’t the only company to produce high-efficiency solar cells. A version made by Panasonic is just as efficient, and SunPower makes ones that are significantly more so (see “Record-Breaking Solar Cell Points the Way the Cheaper Solar Power”). But Silevo claims it could make its panels as cheaply as conventional ones if it can scale up from its current production capacity of 32 megawatts to the factory Musk has planned, which is expected to produce 1,000 megawatts or more.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions in June
June 19th, 2014Thank you for saving Cryptogon.
AN $25
CB $144
JG $120
BM AU$100
AH $25
RT $15
JR $40
PW £10
CM $25
RH $20
JM £10
AM $5
CH $20
KL $5
KH $15
JS $25
JH $50
Eileen $75
Windhorse NZ$100
DR NZ$150
I need to note a correction for April: GS sent $100 in the mail and I forgot to acknowledge it. Thank you, GS.
Global Peace Index 2014
June 19th, 2014Keep scrolling down to find the U.S. at position 101.
Via: Guardian:
The top five most peaceful nations were completely unchanged from the previous year’s study, with Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland again runners up to Iceland. Europe remained the most peaceful region as a whole although the United Kingdom ranked 47th, France 48th and Turkey 128th.
As well as Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan, the other nations in the bottom five for peacefulness were Iraq and Somalia.
The Fall of Iraq – What You Aren’t Being Told
June 18th, 2014Via: Storm Clouds Gathering:
Research Credit: Pookie
U.S. F-18s Over Iraq
June 18th, 2014I’ll update this with a better source when it becomes available.
Via: Daily Mail:
The United States began flying surveillance missions over Iraq in F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets on Wednesday, it emerged late in the afternoon.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked President Obama for air strikes against the Islamist offshoots of al-Qaeda who have been carving a wide swath through his country.
So far the White House has been unwilling to agree, but the surveillance missions mark the first declared U.S. flyovers since American troops left Iraq at the end of 2011.
Reports first surfaced on Twitter from ABC, NBC and Fox News about the sorties, which are taking off and landing on the USS George H.W. Bush, an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
The Obama administration had already authorized ‘manned and unmanned’ surveillance flights, Fox News reported. But F-18s are not surveillance aircraft.
They are attack planes.
A U.S. official hinted to Fox that part of the strategy is to project strength by rolling out the big guns even on routine video and photo missions.
‘It’s not so much about looking as it is being seen,’ the official said.
Infertility in Spanish Pigs Has Been Traced to Plastics. A Warning for Humans?
June 18th, 2014Via: National Geographic:
A strange catastrophe struck Spain’s pig farmers in the spring of 2010. On 41 farms across the country—each home to between 800 and 3,000 pigs—many sows suddenly ceased bearing young.
On some farms, all the sows stopped reproducing. On others, those that did become pregnant produced smaller litters.
When investigators examined the sows and the semen that had been used to artificially inseminate them—it had been collected from different boar studs and refrigerated—they couldn’t find anything wrong. The sperm cells weren’t misshapen. None of the sows were diseased. No microbes or fungal toxins were detected in their feed or water.
Only one factor was common to all the farms and studs: The plastic bags used for semen storage all came from the same place.
Investigating those bags has led Cristina Nerín, an analytical chemist at the University of Zaragoza who studies packaging materials, to publish new research that traces the pigs’ infertility to chemical compounds in the plastics.
This is “the first time that the correlation between reproductive failures and compounds migrating from plastic materials [has been] studied and demonstrated,” says Nerín, whose team published last month in the journal Scientific Reports.
The implications could extend far beyond the farm.
Obama Deploys Troops to Protect Embassy in Iraq
June 18th, 2014Via: Time:
President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of up to 275 military personnel “equipped for combat” into Iraq to protect the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Monday, as American and Iranian diplomats met briefly to discuss whether the two countries can work together to defuse the crisis exploding in Iraq.
