AUSTRALIA: BREAKTHROUGH IN SOLAR CELL EFFICIENCY
April 24th, 2012Via: University of Sydney:
Low cost solar cells suitable for rooftop panels could reach a record-breaking 40 percent efficiency following an early stage breakthrough by a University of Sydney researcher and his German partners.
With Australian Solar Institute support, Associate Professor Tim Schmidt from the University’s School of Chemistry, together with the Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy, has developed a “turbo for solar cells”, called photochemical upconversion that allows energy, normally lost in solar cells, to be turned into electricity.
The finding has been published in the Energy & Environmental Science journal.
Associate Professor Tim Schmidt said using the upconversion technique, a process which harvests the part of the solar spectrum currently unused by solar cells, eliminates the need for costly redevelopment of solar cells.
“We are able to boost efficiency by forcing two energy-poor red photons in the cell to join and make one energy-rich yellow photon that can capture light, which is then turned into electricity,” Associate Professor Schmidt said.
“We now have a benchmark for the performance of an upconverting solar cell. We need to improve this several times, but the pathway is now clear.”
Australian Solar Institute Executive Director Mark Twidell said this is a great example of successful collaboration between leading Australian and German solar researchers.
“Together, Australia and Germany can accelerate the pace of commercialisation of solar technologies and drive down the cost of solar electricity,” Mr Twidell said.
“That’s why the Australian Solar Institute is supporting collaboration between the two countries through the Australia-Germany Collaborative Solar Research and Development Program.”
The Australian Solar Institute is a $150 million commitment by the Australian government to support the development of photovoltaic and concentrating solar power technologies in Australia.
Russia’s Micex-RTS Equities Exchange Extends Trading Halt
April 24th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
Russia’s Micex-RTS Exchange has extended a technical halt and the situation is considered an emergency, according to a statement on its website.
The reasons for the halt in trading “are unclear,” Micex- RTS technical aide Artem Payzanskiy said by phone from Moscow. The exchange is investigating the interruption, he said.
Man Builds Beautiful (Outlaw) Treehouse in Canada
April 24th, 2012Great pictures and video at the link.
Via: The HemLoft:
The HemLoft is a self-funded secret creation that I built on crown land in Whistler, Canada. It hangs on a precipitous slope, in a towering stand of Hemlocks, about a five minute walk from the nearest road. When I started building it, I was just a fledgling carpenter, living out of my car. Building an experimental orb deep in the woods, with no electrical power, isn’t the recommended way to ease yourself into carpentry. However, I was armed with a couple of the most powerful tools a carpenter can have: blind naiveté and supreme determination.
FAA Releases Lists of Organizations Authorized to Operate Unmanned Aircraft in the U.S.
April 24th, 2012Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation:
This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally released its first round of records in response to EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for information on the agency’s drone authorization program. The agency says the two lists it released include the names of all public and private entities that have applied for authorizations to fly drones domestically. These lists—which include the Certificates of Authorizations (COAs), issued to public entities like police departments, and the Special Airworthiness Certificates (SACs), issued to private drone manufacturers—show for the first time who is authorized to fly drones in the United States.
Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtors’ Prisons
April 24th, 2012Via: CBS:
How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”
Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
Want to Get Dry Cleaning Done in Russia?
April 24th, 2012Via: Guardian:
It goes something like this. You get to the dry cleaner. There’s a woman, let’s call her Oksana Alexandrovna, sitting behind a low counter, row upon row of clothes in plastic wrap behind her. She’s dealing with a customer. This gives you time to reflect. “Russia is amazing,” you think. “The changes this place has seen – 25 years ago, would I even be standing in a shop like this? The lady in front of me certainly wouldn’t have been handing in a MaxMara dress to clean. A true middle-class experience. In Russia. I’m living it.”
By now, about 12 minutes have passed. Oksana Alexandrovna is caressing the woman’s clothes. Much paperwork is exchanged. A stamp machine is placed on the counter. You wonder what is happening – but soon enough you will know.
Finally, it is your turn. You put six items of clothing on the counter. Oksana Alexandrovna lets out a sigh. This would be the point where you would normally get your receipt and go. But this is Russia. It’s time to get to work. A huge stack of forms emerges. Oksana Alexandrovna takes a cursory glance at your clothes. Then the examination – and the detailed documentation – begins. This black H&M sweater is not a black H&M sweater. It is, in her detailed notes on a paper titled “Receipt-Contract Series KA for the Services of Dry and Wet Cleaning”, “a black women’s sweater with quarter sleeves made by H&M in Cambodia”. Next, there are 20 boxes that could be ticked. Is this sweater soiled? Is it mildly soiled? Very soiled? Perhaps it is corroded? Yellowed? Marred by catches in the thread? All this, and more, is possible. The appropriate boxes are ticked. But that is not all – a further line leaves room for “Other Defects and Notes”. By now, you have spent less time wearing the sweater than Oksana Alexandrovna has spent examining it. This process is repeated five more times. Except with that white cardigan that has 11 buttons. Why do you know it has 11 buttons? Because Oksana Alexandrovna has counted each and every button. Twice.
The process is almost over. Oksana Alexandrovna asks you to sign your name. Five times. She firmly stamps each page (for your detailed receipt has now run to two). You clutch the document, hand over 1,500 roubles (£32), say goodbye to that 40 minutes of your life, and go on with your day.
If only that were the end of this tale. Some time wasted, nothing more. But five days later, you must pick up said clothes. And that’s where the real problems can emerge. In between the dropping-off and the picking-up of the clothes, Russia had a presidential election. Riot police, troops and military trucks poured through Moscow. Protesters took to the streets crying foul, dismayed at the prospect of living another six years under Vladimir Putin. And I lost my dry-cleaning receipt.
This is the horror of horrors. Oksana Alexandrovna was not pleased. This meant more paperwork, more signatures, more stamps. The first thing demanded – my passport. “What does my passport have to do with my dry cleaning?”
“Passport!”
I handed it over. She wrote down every bit of information, making sure to note my registration (every resident of and visitor to Russia must make police aware of their residence, a Soviet holdover that shows no sign of disappearing). Next, I was to write down descriptions of each item of clothing I had handed in. “Five black sweaters and one white one.” “Not good enough!” “The white sweater had 11 buttons?” “Please take this more seriously!” More signatures. More stamps. “You’ve stolen more than an hour of my life!” I yelled. Another passport check. “Give me my clothes!” Forty minutes later, I had them in hand. My nerves were somewhere else entirely.
U.S. to Penalize Authoritarian Regimes That Crack Down on Dissidents
April 24th, 2012Ah, ok. I suppose that the U.S. regime is going to get busy penalizing itself.
Or not.
U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border:
Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.” They sometimes keep her detained for three to four hours (all while telling her that she will be released more quickly if she answers all their questions and consents to full searches).
Poitras is now forced to take extreme steps — ones that hamper her ability to do her work — to ensure that she can engage in her journalism and produce her films without the U.S. Government intruding into everything she is doing. She now avoids traveling with any electronic devices. She uses alternative methods to deliver the most sensitive parts of her work — raw film and interview notes — to secure locations. She spends substantial time and resources protecting her computers with encryption and password defenses. Especially when she is in the U.S., she avoids talking on the phone about her work, particularly to sources. And she simply will not edit her films at her home out of fear — obviously well-grounded — that government agents will attempt to search and seize the raw footage.
That’s the climate of fear created by the U.S. Government for an incredibly accomplished journalist and filmmaker who has never been accused, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
Via: Guardian:
President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a plan to impose sanctions against foreign entities and individuals who help authoritarian regimes use technology to crack down on dissidents, an administration official said.
Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart
April 24th, 2012Via: New York Times:
In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.
The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.
Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”
Homeland Security Raids Flee Market Over Pirated DVDs, Counterfeit Apparel
April 24th, 2012Via: Baltimore Sun:
Vendors at the Patapsco Flea Market have a history of allegedly selling counterfeit and pirated merchandise, according to an affidavit, which outlined the latest accusation that resulted in a raid Sunday by federal Homeland Security Investigations special agents.
Capping a 2 1/2-year-long investigation into counterfeit apparel and accessories as well as pirated DVDs and musical recordings, federal investigators confiscated numerous items being sold there.
Research Credit: MS
For First Time Since Depression, More Mexicans Leave U.S. Than Enter
April 24th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans now leave the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.
It is the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.
“I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s,” said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, which has been gathering data on the subject for 30 years.
